[Taxacom] Fwd: Woodpeckers, primates, as well as the Wallace Line gauntlet

[Richard Zander]

Something strange in this exchange. Phenomena involving multiple occurrences of multiple entities in a complex environment are all aleatory, all stochastic, all chance-ridden. The central limit theorem makes it look like straight causality, that's all. Figuring out what happened is probabilistic, and as such disquieting to those who need a simple, mechanistic answer. I don't know of a method other than intuition for this.

 
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden, PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA�
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/�and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
Modern Evolutionary Systematics Web site: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/21EvSy.htm



-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Heads
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 3:13 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Fwd: Woodpeckers, primates,as well as the Wallace Line gauntlet

Dear Robin,
 
As usual, I'm in complete agreement with everything you've written. Using chance (dispersal) to explain a pattern is just nihilism and leads nowhere. On the positive side, have a look at the Mol. Phylogen. Evol. website. 13 of the 46 forthcoming papers (28%) have chosen to put maps in their graphic abstracts - their most interesting result was a geographic pattern! At the rate these patterns are now accumulating, I can't see the concept of chance dispersal lasting much longer. Once it's dropped, a real science of biogeography may develop. 

Michael

Wellington, New Zealand.

My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0

--- On Tue, 24/5/11, Robinwbruce at aol.com <Robinwbruce at aol.com> wrote:


From: Robinwbruce at aol.com <Robinwbruce at aol.com>
Subject: [Taxacom] Fwd: Woodpeckers, primates, as well as the Wallace Line gauntlet
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Received: Tuesday, 24 May, 2011, 1:13 AM