[Taxacom] scientific predictions concerning Wallacean marsupials and primates

[Michael Heads]

Hi Jason,

You say that the Vanessa indica clade (Palearctic and Oriental) 'is derived
with respect to the basal clades (Holarctic V. atalanta and Hawaiian V.
tamemea)...'. No, it's not derived - the indica clade is *sister* to
the atalanta + tamemea clade. Both clades are equally 'basal'.
   You also say 'and both clades sister to the Ethiopian V. abyssinica,
which clearly suggests dispersal out of Africa'. Why is this *clear*?  The
unconstrained DIVA analysis (Fig. 2) gave a *widespread ancestor* (in
Africa, Holarctic, Oriental and Hawaii regions). This wasn't the desired
result, so the authors then *stipulated* that the ancestral area of the
genus as a whole could be no more than 2 'areas', and got a centre of
origin in South America and Africa. Obviously if you *stipulate* a
restricted centre of origin before analysis, then you will find one.






On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 12:53 PM, JF Mate <aphodiinaemate at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michael/John,
>
> you make a distinction of dispersal that is tailored specifically to
> make panbiogeography unassailable. You define a "normal" dispersal,
> the one that you like, as the dispersal that  "...can be observed
> every day. The distribution of every species changes (slightly) every
> day because of dispersal. ... in the weeds that colonise a garden, or
> in an albatross crossing the Pacific, and takes place by normal,
> observed means of dispersal." This distinction has several in built
> assumptions that you haven´t discussed, either because you assume them
> to be self-evident or, rather, because the distinction may not be as
> clear as you hope.
>
> The obvious one it to ask what is meant by "normal", "observed",
> "slightly", etc. All these terms are very human but very vague and I
> can´t see how one cannot simply say "a little more".
>
> The second is the assertion that "it doesn´t lead to speciation". Not
> only do I not understand exactly what is meant by this but further you
> neither provide a basis to for your assertions nor examples to support
> this. I have briefly mentioned these in the case of Polygonia
> (butterflies being a well researched group), but a much better example
> is the phylogeny of Vanessa (Wahlberg & Rubinoff, 2011) that John
> aludes to when he mentions V. vulcanica (although it is further
> removed in time). He assumes that this is an example of vicariance
> when dispersal provides a simpler explanation for lineages such as
> indica. The branch lengths within the V. indica group are much too
> shallow, not just the stems but the tips as well, and the individuals
> within each species have divergences which are very low compared with
> other Vanessa species, which suggests a fast and very diversification,
> more likely the result of recent climatic events rather than
> geological ones. In particular the placement of this clade is derived
> with respect to the basal clades (Holarctic V. atalanta and Hawaiian
> V. tamemea) and both clades sister to the Ethiopian V. abyssinica,
> which clearly suggests dispersal out of Africa, and not some
> mysterious, and much more ancient, Tethyan vicariance event.
>
> Furthermore, Wahlberg & Rubinoff find that highly vagile species have
> highly restricted sister taxa. This demonstrates that, gene flow on
> its own is not sufficient a factor to explain allopatric speciation;
> and that vagility can be highly labile. Hence current dispersal
> ability of a lineage is not in itself enough to rule out dispersal as
> a mechanism. This examplifies why a priori assumptions about dispersal
> ability (what I suspect underpins your distinction between normal and
> LD dispersal) can lead you astray and how "normal" is anything but.
>
> In regards to the Waters et al paper that Ken has kindly shared, it
> may be harsh, but your rebuttal is similar to previous answers of
> yours so it is difficult to see how it changes anything then and
> since. It is a fact that it is futile to constructively argue when any
> evidence presented by side is summarily dismissed as inherently
> tainted by their limitations while you ignore your own problems. I
> particularly find troubling the idea that falsification is
> philosophically problematic to you and that your solution is to seek
> "... corroboration – either there is subsequent evidence that is in
> agreement or there is not. In the latter situation one is confronted
> with unresolved conflict for which there is no objective recipe to
> make a choice.". By rejecting all the other avenues that can possibly
> test for mechanisms, your strictly orthodox interpretation of
> panbiogeography has anchored the field out of science. It is
> historical but with a bias of simply seeking to confirm what it
> "knows" or create knowledge by imagining as yet unknown geological
> events. Odd or contradictory examples are either fitted by a
> combination of denial (of LDD, of molecular markers,), imagination
> (lumping a few dispersal tracks and then assuming vicariance is a real
> risk), and labelling (calling non panbiogeographers "dispersalists" as
> a way of denying vicariance to anybody but panbiogeography); or simply
> ignored. Only when you lose that anchor can you hope for conciliatory
> discourse.
>
> Jason
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> Nurturing Nuance while Assaulting Ambiguity for 31 Some Years, 1987-2018.
>



-- 
Dunedin, New Zealand.

My books:

*Biogeography and evolution in New Zealand. *Taylor and Francis/CRC, Boca
Raton FL. 2017.
https://www.routledge.com/Biogeography-and-Evolution-in-New-Zealand/Heads/p/book/9781498751872


*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge. 2014. www.cambridge.org/9781107041028


*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California Press,
Berkeley. 2012. www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271968


*Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University Press,
New York. 1999. (With R. Craw and J. Grehan).
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Bm0_QQ3Z6GUC
<http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Bm0_QQ3Z6GUC&dq=panbiogeography&source=gbs_navlinks_s>