[Taxacom] Eccrine glands

[Curtis Clark]

On 2009-03-24 08:19, Kenneth Kinman wrote:
>       Well, I didn't actually set myself up, because I specified "fish".
> Owls are descendants of fish, but they are not fish. 

Not according to my cladist ichthyologist friend (although he explicitly 
doesn't study the feathered flying fish).

>       As for eccrine glands, one could probably write a whole book on
> their distribution.  In short, different mammalian taxa solve their
> thermoregulatory problems in different ways.  Carnivores pant (think of
> it as "internal sweating" through the lungs) probably because
> sweat-soaked coats would be problematic.  People and horses with less
> dense coats can more freely sweat externally.  Elephants could have done
> the same, but they conserve water by using their big ears to
> thermoregulate.  Also depends on the availability of water to drink and
> in their food (desert animals can't afford to sweat a lot).      

So are you saying that their distribution is too labile for phylogenetic 
use? What is the plesiomorphy?

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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
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