[Taxacom] new opinion publication

[Stephen Thorpe]

"Phylogenetics makes meatloaf of biological diversity ..."

Or a veggie patty in the case of botany!


--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 3/2/18, Richard Zander <Richard.Zander at mobot.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] new opinion publication
 To: "Art Borkent" <artborkent at telus.net>, "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Saturday, 3 February, 2018, 5:48 AM
 
 Dr. Borkent has not gone quite
 far enough, though he is definitely on the right track.
 
 Here is my own opinion:
 
 Modern methods of phylogenetic
 analysis cannot model or otherwise well understand
 evolution, Lack of proper evolutionary models cripples the
 potential for mitigation of effects of extreme global
 warming and other thermodynamic consequences of ongoing
 human disturbance.
 
 Neither
 evolutionary pattern nor process is modeled in
 phylogenetics. The optimal phylogenetic pattern of
 dichotomous trees is an artifact of cluster analysis and
 Markov chain Monte Carlo analyses. The pattern expected by
 evolutionary theory, on the other hand, is a branching
 series of radiations of mostly specialized descendants from
 generalized ancestors. The phylogenetic process is a
 continuity of tree nodes, where each node is unnamed and
 characterized by the traits of all taxa distal to it.
 Expected evolutionary process, contrarily, is a series of
 named taxa descended from other named taxa, one species
 generating at least one other species. 
 
 Strict phylogenetic monophyly is an effort to
 make up for the inability of phylogenetic method to delimit
 and characterize taxa. Molecular systematics is further
 confounded by molecular races of one species separately
 giving rise to descendant species that appear paraphyletic
 or shortly polyphyletic. Paraphyly is the expected result of
 evolution, and demonstrably implies a serial evolutionary
 process when evolutionary diagrams are made to model species
 giving rise to species. Dichotomous trees and cladistics
 nodes giving rise to nodes model nothing in nature. Although
 cluster analysis based on cladistic methods does generally
 group evolutionarily close taxa, the details are often
 misleading because they only reflect the method. Otherwise
 acceptable taxa are split or lumped based on mechanical
 cladistic principles.
 
 A
 method that cannot falsify a hypothesis is as non-science as
 a hypothesis that cannot be falsified. A perfectly
 acceptable scientific hypothesis that one particular taxon
 gave rise to one other cannot be falsified by any
 phylogenetic method, because sister groups are not serially
 ordered.
 
 Phylogenetics
 makes meatloaf of biological diversity, in my opinion.
 
 -------
 Richard H. Zander
 Missouri
 Botanical Garden – 4344 Shaw Blvd. – St. Louis –
 Missouri – 63110 – USA
 richard.zander at mobot.org
 
 Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
 and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/
 
 
 -----Original
 Message-----
 From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu]
 On Behalf Of Art Borkent
 Sent: Thursday,
 February 01, 2018 3:50 PM
 To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
 Subject: [Taxacom] new opinion publication
 
 I would like to draw attention
 to a recent paper I published that addresses some serious
 issues in how cladistics/phylogeny is done. It is worth
 mentioning that the paper reflects, at least in part, the
 opinions of numbers of colleagues who prefer to remain
 anonymous (mostly for grant winning reasons). 
 
 I would be interested in
 responses and discussion!
 
 The paper is open access.
 
  Borkent, A. 2018. The State of Phylogenetic
 Analysis: Narrow Visions and Simple Answers – Examples
 from the Diptera (flies). Zootaxa 4374: 107–143.
 
 http://mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4374.1.7
 <http://mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4374.1.7>
 
 Dr. Art Borkent
 691-8th Ave. SE,
 Salmon Arm,
 British Columbia,
 V1E 2C2, Canada.
  
 Phone: (250) 833-0931
 Email: artborkent at telus.net
 <mailto:artborkent at telus.net>
 website:
 www.inhs.illinois.edu/research/FLYTREE/Borkent.html <http://www.inhs.illinois.edu/research/FLYTREE/Borkent.html>
  
 Research Associate of the
 Royal British Columbia Museum and the American Museum of
 Natural History
  
      
 "Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit"
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.