[Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?
Stephen Thorpe
stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz
Thu Feb 8 19:21:43 CST 2018
At any rate, the basic problem appears to be that "understanding" is always inconclusive and in flux (and may not even be able to be defined very precisely if you mean some sort of collective understanding by the entire scientific community). So, the question is how much inconclusivity and/or flux do we want in taxonomic classification? My preference is to try to minimise it. I would go for more wide scoped supraspecific taxa (genera, families, etc.) There is nothing worse than oversplitting of genera, etc. This just leads to more instability as a result of phylogenetic studies.
Stephen
--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 9/2/18, Michael A. Ivie <mivie at montana.edu> wrote:
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?
To: "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>, taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Received: Friday, 9 February, 2018, 2:09 PM
OK, I misunderstood you, but you
misunderstood me as well. "... in the
face of ever advancing understanding of the
evolution of life on earth"
is not
meant to be just phylogenetics, but all aspects of biology
that
is bring more and more sense to the
universe every day (expect in
understanding
voting patterns or political motivations).
Mike
On 2/8/2018 6:02 PM, Stephen
Thorpe wrote:
> Mike said: "... in
the face of ever advancing understanding of the evolution of
life on earth"
>
> It is a moot point whether
cladistics/phylogenetics does in fact advance understanding
of the evolution of life on earth! It seems to me to be
little more than a paint by numbers approach which can in
theory be replicated by anyone else who uses the same
character weightings, etc., but replicability alone does not
imply that we are actually advancing understanding of the
evolution of life on earth"!
>
> You also misunderstood my comments about
retaining birds and mammals as named taxa. They ARE
monophyletic, and I didn't say to necessarily retain
them as taxa of equal rank to reptiles (so subtaxa of
reptiles are indeed fine to me also), I just meant that we
don't want to simply dump them into reptiles such that
Reptilia simply contains various subtaxa from each in a way
that doesn't group bird (or mammal) subtaxa together
under a name.
>
>
I'm surprised that anyone finds "interesting"
the inconclusive and ephemeral results of phylogenetic
studies!
>
>
Stephen
>
>
--------------------------------------------
> On Fri, 9/2/18, Michael A. Ivie <mivie at montana.edu>
wrote:
>
> Subject:
Re: [Taxacom] Elimination of paraphyly: sensible or not?
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Received: Friday, 9 February, 2018,
12:56 PM
>
> Hi
Stephan,
>
> It
seems to me that you have this premise
> backwards. Rather than there
> being a
> cabal
of rabid cladists obsessed with eliminating paraphyly,
> I
> think there
is a cabal of rabid
> revanchists
obsessed with hanging on to
> familiar
paraphyletic taxa in the face of ever
>
advancing understanding
> of the
evolution of
> life on earth. In
actual practice, most advocates
> of a
monophyly standard continue to use and
> propose taxa that cannot be
> shown to be
>
monophyletic, but if we have evidence, why not use it?
>
> You say
"We wish to
> retain birds and
also mammals as useful monophyletic
>
taxa, for obvious reasons." How, if you
> mean as
>
nomenclaturally-recognized taxa at
> a
level equal to reptiles, is this
>
obvious,
> or to be wished for? We
have the words "birds"
> and
"mammals"
> for the folk
> taxonomy, but why not recognize them
for what they really
>
> are? Subtaxa of Reptiles works fine
for
> me.
>
> As for why look for
> monophyletic lineages? Because
scientifically,
> doing phylogenetics
is INTERESTING. I myself
> do mostly
alpha taxonomy,
> because I
> don't have the skill set to be a
leading
> phylogeneticist, but
> I find their results
> to be very thought provoking,
interesting and even
> exciting. It
is not that they get too much
>
funding, it is that
> faunistics and
taxonomy
> get to little.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> On
> 2/8/2018 3:07 PM, Stephen Thorpe
wrote:
> >
>
Hi all,
> > I have been giving some
thought
> to the cladistic obsession
of eliminating paraphyly in
>
taxonomic classification. For many taxa (above species),
the
> subtaxa consist of one or more
clearly monophyletic groups,
> plus a
possibly paraphyletic residue (i.e. no apomorphies to
> bind the residue together into a
monophylum). So, if we must
>
eliminate paraphyly (or possible paraphyly), the only
> options are to either: (1) subsume the
monophyletic subtaxa
> into the
paraphyletic residue; or (2) break up the
> paraphyletic residue into monophyletic
subtaxa. Effectively
> the two options
may actually be equivalent. An example might
> help to illustrate my point. Let's
take a simplistic
> view of reptiles
as scaly tetrapods, birds as feathery
>
winged bipeds derived from reptiles, and mammals as
hairy
> tetrapods derived from
reptiles. So, amniotes (reptiles,
>
birds and mammals) are a monophyletic group, as are birds
> and also mammals, but not reptiles
(reptiles being the
>
"paraphyletic residue"). We wish to retain
birds
> and also mammals as useful
monophyletic taxa, for obvious
>
reasons. So, what to do? Luckily, within reptiles there
are
> some monophyletic subgroups of
sufficient diversity to be
> useful,
but this might not have been the case if all
> reptiles were just basically
"skinks", with only
>
species or perhaps also generic differences between them.
> Had this been so, amniotes would have
to be taxonomically
> split between
numerous (maybe hundreds) virtually identical
> taxa of "skinks", plus birds
and also mammals as
> just two taxa at
the same level (not necessarily a ranked
> level, but direct child taxa of
amniotes). Would this be a
> useful
classification of amniotes? I suggest that it would
> be far more useful to recognise a
single paraphyletic taxon
> of
reptiles (all the "skinks" in the hypothetical
> example), plus birds and also mammals
(i.e. just 3 direct
> child taxa of
amniotes). I wonder for plants, fungi and also
> invertebrates, if there might be many
taxa analogous to the
> above
hypothetical example, with a paraphyletic residue
> consisting of hundreds of
"skinks", but also with
>
just one or two very distinct and diverse monophyletic
> subtaxa? If so, would it be sensible to
eliminate paraphyly
> or best just to
live with a known paraphyletic residue as a
> unified subtaxon? Given the amount of
limited resources
> which are being
allocated to projects to eliminate
>
paraphyly, to the detriment of alpha taxonomy, it would
be
> nice to think that there was a
clearly good reason for the
>
elimination of paraphyly, but I'm not so sure that
there
> is! The usual argument seems
to be that you cannot make
>
meaningful predictions from paraphyletic taxa, but how
much
> biology does rely on the making
of predictions based on
> taxon
membership, and what proportion of those predictions
> end up being true anyway? For example,
you might predict
> that a newly
discovered braconid is a parasitoid, but a few
> braconids are phytophagous anyway. So,
I guess that the main
> question that
I am posing is whether we think that the
> benefits of monophyly justify the
spending of so much
> limited
resources on the elimination of paraphyly? Perhaps
> the elimination of paraphyly is being
driven instead by
> economic factors,
doing phylogenies being a more cost
>
efficient way for institutional scientists to spend their
> time on than alpha taxonomy?
> >
> Stephen
> >
>
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> --
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__________________________________________________
>
> Michael A.
Ivie, Ph.D.,
> F.R.E.S.
>
> NOTE: two
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>
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--
__________________________________________________
Michael A. Ivie, Ph.D.,
F.R.E.S.
NOTE: two
addresses with different Zip Codes depending on carriers
US Post Office Address:
Montana Entomology Collection
Marsh Labs, Room 50
PO Box
173145
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59717
USA
UPS, FedEx, DHL Address:
Montana Entomology Collection
Marsh Labs, Room 50
1911 West
Lincoln Street
Montana State University
Bozeman, MT 59718
USA
(406)
994-4610 (voice)
(406) 994-6029 (FAX)
mivie at montana.edu
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