So much has been happening in the world while I was giving a talk on the adaptiveness of religion in Sydney. The Platypus thing was one item I'd have blogged on if the rest of the blogosphere hadn't beaten me to it. All I can say is that no matter how many bloggers write on the mosaic nature of the platypus genome, at least I got to hold one. And I would never have used the meaningless term "reptile".
And although I have only been to NYC twice, I can say I have a favourite store there, and I saw it on CSI: NY recently (although they obviously tidied up the counter for the shoot).
And there's a paper out debunking the latest version of the Internodal Species Concept. This is what happens when people take set theory as a useful guide to doing taxonomy. It's an object lesson, folks.
Finally, there's a paper that tries, one more time, to defend evolutionary systematics against cladistics, in the form of an argument that Hennig is being incoherent logically. I will get back to that one.
Stumble It!
Comments
I've never seen Maxilla & Mandible but I will go next time I'm in NYC. If you like that, I recommend a visit to Deyrolle on Rue du Bac in Paris.
Posted by: Junco | May 9, 2008 10:23 PM
It took me a bit of head-twisting to get what the point of the Envall paper on Hennig was, but I think it's ironic that Envall accuses Hennig of conflating two concepts because that seems to be exactly what Envall seems to be doing.
Are paraphyletic groups real? Certainly they are, because that's what evolution does. Should paraphyletic groups be used as the basis for a formal classification? Probably not, because any line of descent can be broken into a near-infinite array of paraphyletic groups. Remember Psychozoa vs. Animalia? Envall seems to be thinking that answering "yes" to the first question automatically demands an answer of "yes" to the second question, and I don't see that at all.
For the record, I actually like the idea of distinguishing "holophyly" from "monophyly", because sometimes it would be handy to have a term that unites holo- and paraphyletic groups to the exclusion of polyphyletic groups. Bit of a lost battle, I'm afraid. I would also note that while paraphyletic groups are theoretically distinct from polyphyletic groups, my own practical experience is that when all one is presented with is a phylogenetic tree then it's not always easy to tell whether a non-holophyletic group is paraphyletic or polyphyletic.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor | May 9, 2008 10:52 PM
I remember when we went to that store; there was a good sized gaggle of us, wasn't there? Matt and Cathy are here visiting and I will remind them of it tomorrow. I know I bought something old and dead there, but don't remember what.
Posted by: Susan Silberstein | May 10, 2008 2:40 AM