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

[John Grehan]

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Mate

> If the closest groups to your ingroup happen to come from a mainland
> source or from a distant source then you can´t say much other than 
> what the data suggests. Jason"

Heads has already responded, but I would add to the add emphasis to "what the data suggests." It is usually the case that the 'data' (phylogenetic relationships and distribution) 'suggest' (as if they speak only one voice) one option, or any option for that matter. That is where panbiogeography comes in, by providing a spatial context through comparisons of spatial structure within the group concerned, in relation to other taxa, and through geomorphological/tectonic correlation.

Everyone, virtually, said that because the closest groups to the ingroups of Galapagos were in mainland America (although this was not always the case) it was without question that this was due to dispersal from the Americas. And to top it off, there was no geological evidence to support any other option, as Mayr noted in dismissing Croizat as being wrong for the Galapagos and therefore wrong for the world.

Of course it was Mayr who ignored geological models of his time which argued for island arc systems such as that now comprising Central America that were postulated to have once originated or crossed the Galapagos hotspot. And some models suggest this arc was huge in size, not only in length, but in width. Now there are tectonic models that also displace parts of the Greater Antilles (e.g. Cuba) well out into the Pacific. Its as if the eastern Pacific, currently so empty of islands, was once a great traffic jam on island arcs and basaltic plateau, some perhaps on an almost microcontinental scale, that filled this region and also that of the Western Pacific. This is tectonic correlation with biogeography on a massive scale. All the appeals to dispersal in the world never managed to recognize this correlation and the ensuing geological predications and yet somehow we are called upon to treat it as a cosmic joke that had nothing to do with what the 'data suggest.'

John Grehan

 		 	   		  
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