[Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications

Fri Oct 4 08:34:00 CDT 2013

Not science? Let's take cladistics. For 30 years, cladists have pondered
and published on the Hennigian idea that universally all speciation
events are accompanied by pseudoextinction of the ancestral taxon. This
was done knowing that some speciation events are peripatric and the
ancestor does not go pseudoextinct. So I've been assured by a
Taxacommer.

Thus, given reality, the proper evolutionary model should be a
combination of singly (speciation with ancestral stasis) and doubly
(speciation with ancestral change through anagenesis at the taxon level)
divergent speciation events. Given that singly divergent speciation
events produce polychotomous branches, maximum parsimony should be
focused on generating a longer tree including such polychotomous
branching, through prior constraint on the basis of non-phylogenetic
information (which is abundant). 

Apparently it was decided by cladists that the evolutionary model would
be limited to doubly divergent speciation events because that yielded
fully resolved trees and did not require thinking. 

Another decision was to present molecular strains as "lineages" of taxa.
Given that molecular strains of the same taxon pop up in many parts of a
cladogram (as "homoplasy"), and are obvious and clearly interpretable as
associated with peripatric evolution, this too is a fully intentional
decision on the part of phylogeneticists to promote mechanistic analysis
over reason, judgment and experience.

This is not Science. Many or even most of the "measures" of
phylogenetics are imaginary.

____________________________
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
Framework: http://tinyurl.com/ltd66dw
UPS and FedExpr -  MBG, 4344 Shaw Blvd, St. Louis 63110 USA

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Thompson
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 9:13 PM
To: Ken Kinman; muscapaul; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications

Sorry, Ken,

Yes, your proposal is fine, but is not Science.

Yes, you can say some families are the same, and that other families are
not the same as they may be equal to subfamilies or superfamilies. Some
subfamilies are the same but others are equal to superfamilies or
families. Et cetera.

Science needs consistent measures. A meter or an ounce need to be the
same across all hypotheses. Likewise, if one wants to make scientific
hypotheses about biodiversity the groups need to be the same,
representing a measure of the same underlying component, etc. 

Oh, well ...

Chris

From: Ken Kinman 
Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 5:48 PM
To: Chris Thompson ; muscapaul ; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications

Hi Chris,

       I hope Paul will respond to your post, as I thought it was an
excellent point that needs to be answered and discussed more thoroughly
and directly.

       As far as higher classifications having no information bearing on
biodiversity, I can think of one solution to that supposed problem.
Although the clades being compared should be roughly the same age, there
is no reason that those clades need to be the same rank.  Family
Hominidae (sensu stricto) could be compared to the subfamilies of Family
Pongidae.  And your older dipteran family could be compared to
Superfamily Carnoidea or an even more inclusive clade.  There are
solutions that are less drastic than adopting Hennig's age of origin
criterion, and perhaps that is why Hennig's proposed criterion has been
ignored for decades.  

             -----------------Ken

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------

> From: xelaalex at cox.net
> To: muscapaul at gmail.com; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 11:15:30 -0400
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications
> 
> PAUL:
> 
> The scientific question that we begin with was about biodiversity.
> 
> And Hennig said to answer those kinds of questions, then groups based
on 
> time are the best.
> 
> So, under the Hennig system, one could say that family X which now
contains 
> 999 species is more biodiversity, has more speciation, etc., than
family Z 
> which now contains only 1 species. BECAUSE the contents (species) of
each 
> family represents a clade that has evolved over the SAME time period.
> 
> But as I indicated in my Diptera example, comparison of the number of 
> species in Limoniidae versus Inbiomyiidae does not tell you anything
about 
> biodiversity, speciation, etc. because those groups are not
equivalent, not 
> comparable, etc.
> 
> Oh, well ...
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Chris
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: muscapaul
> Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 10:27 AM
> To: TAXACOM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications
> 
> Just out of interest: If actual age would (should?) be playing a role,
> where do we then account for differences between taxa with highly
divergent
> generation time, like drosophilids with perhaps more than 10
generations
> per year under favourable conditions and panthophthalmids which
probably
> take multiple years to develop? And then I am just considering taxa
within
> the same order where one might give rise to new taxa on a much shorter
> absolute time scale than the other.
> 
> Paul
> 
> On 3 October 2013 12:59, Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net> wrote:
> 
> > So, for example, in Diptera, we now recognize a family which is a
clade of
> > some 10 thousand species and of some 200 million years old
(Limoniidae) 
> > and
> > another family of less than a dozen species and probably less than 5
> > million
> > years old (Inbiomyiidae).
> 
> ...
> >
> > So, if one wants to derived scientific hypotheses from
classifications, 
> > one
> > must go back to clades and their age.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Chris
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Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.