Systematics and Biogeography blog 23 Oct 2007 The estimable Drs David Williams and Malte Ebach have started a blog on Systematics and Biogeography, which supports a recent book they haven’t sent me a free copy of yet. Expect much puncturing of pretensions and orthodoxies. Book Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution Species and systematics
Humor The Simpsons on taxonomy 18 Mar 2009 Homer: “Oh, I just love it here! So many things, and so many things of each thing!” From here (go look!) via here. Read More
Evolution Linnaeus on evolution by hybridism 2 May 200918 Sep 2017 It is often stated in the literature that Linnaeus late in life turned to an evolutionary view based on hybridisation (e.g., Clausen, Keck and Hiesey 1939). I myself have repeated this, but as always it’s worth looking at the actual text. Unfortunately I have so little Latin that I can’t… Read More
Epistemology Pattern cladism and the myth of theory dependence of observation 4 Mar 2011 A new paper has been published in the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, entitled “Pattern Cladism, Homology, and Theory-Neutrality” by Christopher Pearson. Either the journal has done something horrible to the text, or the author doesn’t know the difference between Willi Hennig and William Hennig, or between Gareth… Read More
Read through the posted link. Very interesting. Having been an aspiring paleontologist up throught the MS, I think this business of dating lineages based on fossils is pretty scary. Fortunately the group I have done the most systematic work on, the family Rivulidae of the Aplocheiloid killifishes, have, so far as I know, no fossil representatives. There have been two independent DNA trees done for the Aplocheiloids, and they are similar enought that we might actually know something. When relationships and distributions are compared to continental drift maps, one feels pretty confident as to what the vicariant events were. So we can date the vicariant events based on geological, but nonfossil, information. We have revised one Rivulid genus based on DNA. The sequence of speciation events and the geological history of that part of South America correlate very nicely. Talking around, workers in other fish groups are coming up with the same sort of scenario. If all this is so, the modern bony fishes originated earlier than we have thought, and diversification was rapid early on.