[Taxacom] What is Homo sapiens

[Gerald Schneeweiss]

Hi Adam,

this question has been recently addressed in  a group of European 
mountain plants: Dillenberger and Kadereit (2017): Simultaneous 
speciation in the European high mountain flowering plant genus Facchinia 
(Minuartia s.l., Caryophyllaceae) revealed by genotyping-by-sequencing. 
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 112: 23-35. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2017.04.016
The geographic setting is different, bus island-like, i.e., 
geographically distinct refugia in the Alps imposed by Pleistocene 
glacial advances. For my two pennies worth: Irrespective of that the 
approaches used by the authors are not optimal in this context (they 
used tree reconstruction methods, but coalescent-based simulations would 
have been better, I assume) it will probably remain difficult to prove 
simultaneous speciation, as one needs to show that any hard polytomy (or 
failure to support a model of non-simultaneous divergence) is not just 
due to too few data.
Best wishes
Gerald


> This is one point I have been thinking about for the past day or so as 
> a result of posts on Taxacom.
>
> Generally it is assumed that when a tree has multiple branches arising 
> from a single node it must be poorly resolved. However, it occurred to 
> me that it is quite possible that several new species could arise 
> simultaneously from a single ancestor species.
>
> I can easily envisage that when sea level was lower a single species 
> could have inhabited what are now the islands of Indonesia, for 
> example. Rising sea levels would then isolate the populations on each 
> island, and over time they would speciate, creating a number of 
> different species at the same time (not instantaneous of course) from 
> a single ancestor species.
>
> Is there a way to test whether such a node is reliable? I should 
> mention that I do not actually run analyses myself; I am more of a 
> traditional taxonomist involved in DNA research, partly to ensure that 
> the taxa are correctly identified. It is quite possible there is an 
> obvious answer to my question, and if so I would be interested to hear 
> it.
>
> Adam.
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> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.

-- 
Gerald M. Schneeweiss, Assoc.-Prof. Dr.
Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research
University of Vienna
http://plantbiogeography.univie.ac.at

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