[Taxacom] paraphylophobia again

[Stephen Thorpe]

[Don Colless] what is a "conclusive" syapomorphy

[reply] No flies on you, eh Don?! Any streps - how's your throat? :) A  
"conclusive" synapomorphy is my rushed bad wording for "convincing"  
synapomorphy. Streps have posteromotorism like beetles, but this is  
hardly a convincing synapomorphy! They also have haltere like  
structures like flies, but this isn't convincing either! I just put  
the "conclusive" qualifier in to rule out such putative but rather  
unconvincing synapo's...

Part of the Strep problem may be that its sister taxon isn't another  
SINGLE order, but a group of orders, like maybe the whole Holometabola  
or something? It is interesting that the most primitive streps have  
Zygentoma as hosts...

Stephen


Quoting Don.Colless at csiro.au:

>
> In any case, what is a "conclusive" syapomorphy - per se, that is,  
> not as bolstered up by many associated characters? And arguing about  
> the divine nature of Willi Hennig is as fruitless as doing likewise  
> for Jesus Christ? I must add that Hennig was a magnificent  
> taxonomist before his Sherlock Holmes epiphany.
>
>
> Donald H. Colless
> CSIRO Div of Entomology
> GPO Box 1700
> Canberra 2601
> don.colless at csiro.au
> tuz li munz est miens envirun
>
> ________________________________________
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu  
> [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe  
> [s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz]
> Sent: 21 July 2009 07:35
> To: barry_roth at yahoo.com; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] paraphylophobia again
>
> [Barry Roth] How about finding one synapomorphy uniquely shared by
> Strepsiptera and a subgroup of Insecta?
>
> [reply] What if (a conclusive) one can't be found? How long should we
> keep looking? How much funding should we chew up in the process? How
> many other productive lines of biological enquiry should we give up?
> Let's all stop what we are doing and search for a synapomorphy linking
> Streps to another group of insecta! :)
>
> [Barry Roth] Without imputing any kind of superstitious outlook to
> Stephen, this reminds me of the demands of creationists for
> "transitional forms."
>
> [reply] I am glad you are not imputing any kind of superstitious
> outlook to me! The specifics of the Streps problem are what makes it
> appropriate to look for fossil intermediates, for no other approach
> has worked. You need to read up on recent literature on the topic,
> such as:
>
> Pohl, H.; Beutel, R.G.; Kinzelbach, R. 2005: Protoxenidae fam. nov.
> (Insecta, Strepsiptera) from Baltic amber ? a 'missing link' in
> strepsipteran phylogeny. Zoologica scripta, 34: 57-69.
>
> and also:
>
> Pohl, H.; Beutel, R.G. 2008: The evolution of Strepsiptera (Hexapoda).
> Zoology, 111: 318-338.
>
> In short: creationism sux, but so does science when it gets too
> obsessed with answering intractable problems of phylogeny - so why
> don't we reassess our priorities and do something relatively neutral,
> like documenting the world's biodiversity? There are many hundreds of
> undescribed beetles here in N.Z., for example, but at current rates
> and trends, I fear that they will NEVER all be described...and all the
> funding is going down the sinks of those for whom Hennig is God (or
> Yahweh)!
>
> S
>
>
>
> Quoting Barry Roth <barry_roth at yahoo.com>:
>
>> How about finding one synapomorphy uniquely shared by Strepsiptera
>> and a subgroup of Insecta?  I'm sorry, but the "search for a missing
>> link" model below seems too limiting.  We estimate phylogenetic
>> relationships of many (probably most) groups of organisms without
>> having intermediates.  Indeed, intermediates present their own kind
>> of taxonomic problem.  Without imputing any kind of superstitious
>> outlook to Stephen, this reminds me of the demands of creationists
>> for "transitional forms."
>>
>> Barry Roth
>>
>> --- On Sun, 7/19/09, Stephen Thorpe <s.thorpe at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The general problem is knowing when to stop and move on to something
>> more productive. Take the Strepsiptera problem, for example. A huge
>> amount of time and resources goes into trying to work out the
>> phylogenetic position of Strepsiptera within Insecta, but it cannot be
>> conclusively solved until a fossil is found which is half-way between
>> a strep and something else.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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