Re: Apomorphy-based definitions

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> << The boundaries of clades and species need not coincide. [...] >>
>
> Indeed, they almost never do. But cladists do name clades as well as
species.

Some don't name species anymore -- see
http://www.mnhn.fr/mnhn/bimm/pleijel_.htm (the homepage of a PhyloCode
mailing list member).

> And if a species can belong to two different clades across a clade
boundary,
> naming clades is pointless.

Why?

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> << Then we use the characters to find out whether it falls above or
>  below some split, and then we use this hypothesis to tell which taxon it
>  belongs to. >>
>
> The point I was trying to make is that you can't always use characters to
> find out whether a species falls above or below some split, because the
split
> almost always occurs independently of the acquisition of characters.

Probably true, but since nobody has seen the clades splitting, by using
characters (however molecular they be...) phylogenetic hypotheses remain
parsimonious... testable... scientific. Or so I understand it.