[Taxacom] Sequence data less subjective?

[Richard Zander]

Kirk:
Molecular data is neither more nor less subjective/objective than the morphological. Using molecular data is simply unscientific. Molecular data should back up morphological (meaning expressed traits subject to adaptive pressures), and when it doesn't (they don't, I mean), phylogeneticists wrongly use the molecular results. Those molecular results are based an a very small subset of the molecular races for each species. Such molecular races, over time, create cladistic networks internal to the species. These networks are often molecularly paraphyletic. Thus, because of unsampled or unsampleable races, a large degree of uncertainty is present in estimating sister group relationships in molecular systematics. In particular, for molecular cladograms with exemplars from only one species, species-level paraphyly may be expected at an average of 4.5 nodes in any direction. (In the species of mosses I have reviewed, anyway.)

I have demonstrated this using metadata in my recent papers, all on ResearchGate or Academia.com.

Richard


________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of Kirk Fitzhugh via Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2020 1:46 PM
To: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Subject: [Taxacom] Sequence data less subjective?

Can anyone point to publications that have suggested that sequence data are
less subjective, or more objective than morphological characters when
inferring phylogenetic hypotheses? Feel free to email me directly.

Thanks,
Kirk
--

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
J. Kirk Fitzhugh, Ph.D.
Curator of Polychaetes
Invertebrate Zoology Section
Research & Collections Branch
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
900 Exposition Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90007
Phone: 213-763-3233
FAX: 213-746-2999
e-mail: kfitzhug at nhm.orghttp://www.nhm.org/site/research-collections/polychaetous-annelids
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