RE: Combined answer 1: cladistics

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

John Pourtless (vindexurvogel@hotmail.com) wrote:

<Inferences on phylogeny derived from any given area, be it genetics,
embryology, or what have you, are if formulated in such a way that they
make a specific prediction which can be falsified, as valid as any PAUP
generated  cladogram.>

  Before using PAUP* as a scapegoat, earlier formative work and current
analytical work utilized other packages of algorithim crunching and data
comparison, including Phylip, MacClade, etc. Read the literature,
expansively, on using such mechanics and theories, before lambasting a
"PAUP generated cladogram." Many analysts do not use PAUP*, in fact, and
there are means to study character transformations (a subject that has
come up here) that cannot be done in PAUP* but can in MacClade. Similarly,
cladistic methods can be utilized to study genetics and objective
arguments of embryology, which are often innately tied to morphology (one
should say, genetics and morphology should be studied together when
possible, providing a [now broadening] window of groups that can only be
tested by genes). Studies are currently underway showing the effect that
fossils on living trees utilizing both genes and morphology vastly affect
the series of origins of many taxa, and alter the way that characters or
gene pair transformations and genetic assumptions occur from ancestral
condition through end product.

  The only other recent methods used to produce phylogenies were often
limited in scope, scenarios of "I feel this is right," or consisted of a
series of features one would choose to support their group, rather than
analyzing the potential ability of sistergroups or other taxa to deform
this relationship, something that current "machine-driven" cladistic work
seeks to test and revise (and has been doing so for a few decades, more so
now than later).

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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