[Taxacom] Phylogenetic game

[Kenneth Kinman]

Hi John,
      All specimens that we study are extant specimens.  This is also
true of fossil specimens---the specimens are extant, although the
species may be extinct.  At least I'm pretty sure that was Richard's
meaning.     
      And yes, you are definitely a cladist (like me), and in my opinion
a "strict" cladist (not like me).  Anyone who supports cladifying the
paraphyletic family Pongidae (not only splitting it, but different
strict cladists splitting it in different ways), is in my opinion a
strict cladist.  I won't use the word extreme, because some strict
cladists are more extreme than others.  
               ---------Ken

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John Grehan wrote:
     I'm confused by the restriction of cladistics to extant specimens.
Does the inclusion of fossils mean that the method is no longer
cladistic? 
I'm also confused by the absence 'of a theory of evolution of the groups
involved' Hennig (and Rosa I think) postulated an unequal divergence
from the ancestor. One can implement cladistics without caring either
way, but that would seem to be true of phenetics or any other clustering
method. 
"the pattern of evidence is never used by sadists to create a theory of
evolution of the groups involved." Meaning what? Please give an example
of a non-cladistic method of systematics that does this. 
On the bear speculations - it would seem that could be applied to any
theory of relationship, cladistic or not. 
On paraphyly - I respectfully disagree. Some people are ok with
paraphyletic groups, others are not. So why lose sleep over it? Heck,
only a handful think that morphological evidence can potentially falsify
molecular evidence. But there's no point in castigating anyone for that. 
John Grehan (a cladist according to some, an extreme cladist according
to some, a Hennigian cladists according to some, a non-cladist according
to some).