[Taxacom] new opinion publication

Robert Louis Zuparko rz at berkeley.edu
Sun Feb 4 14:27:08 CST 2018 

I am by no means an authority in phylogeny, cladistics or molecular
studies, but I heartily agree with Borkent's plea for a greater focus on
whole organisms/ecosystems/evolutionary matters, as opposed to the current
practice of relying upon a matrix of molecular "values".

And I don't even like flies.

-Bob Zuparko

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Robert Zuparko
Essig Museum of Entomology
1101 Valley Life Sciences Building, #4780
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3112
(510) 643-0804


On Fri, Feb 2, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> "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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>  Nurturing Nuance while
>  Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.
>
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> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.
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