[Taxacom] Hedges /Kumar (eds) The Timetree of Life

[Jason Mate]

Dear Sergio,

let me start by saying that it is nice to have someone write in whole paragraphs!

In regards to Page´s method, I am not familiar with it (reference please!). Maybe Page´s method hasn´t been used because once cladistic information becomes available then you switch to cladistic biogeography? I really can´t say much else except that the addition of cladistic information to panbiogeography would, in the best of cases, turn it into panbiogeography light. "Worst" case scenario it would become cladistic biogeography? 

In regards to the nature of dispersal, the issue is not the causes of dispersal or immobilism. Every throw of the dice should be assessed independently and trying to find the cause of every throw based on the outcome will result in an infinity of ad hoc explanations (exhibit A, the woodpeckers). Supposing that many examples of dispersal were found which had similarities in space and time (careful here, NOT tracks because the phylogeny and timing of divergences have been worked-out with data independent from the tectonic/geological events) then you could hypothesize that the pattern is more than chance, one-in-a-million event and that some sort of dispersal highway was at work. But trying to figure out why a particular group made it there or not, or did but became extinct? Pointless.

Now, regarding Croizat, I have no personal vendetta on the man or his work. His ideas belong to a time when phylogenetics, in any incarnation, did not exist and hence he had to come with a way to make sense of species distribution.

Best

Jason