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The mission of the International Association of Bryologists (IAB), as a society, is to strengthen bryology by encouraging interactions among all persons interested in byophytes.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Are you with monophyly or are you with paraphyly?

It would be interesting to let everyone answer to the recent question by John G. Guccion (posted by Jim on Bryonet):
"Are you with Brent Mischler who believes "there is no such thing as "species" or "speciation"? Or are you with David Wagner who has spent much of his lifetime learning to identify every plant species in Oregon?"
I have activated a simple "poll" to survey your "yes" or "no"opinion, although I have reworded the question to:

Do species have to be monophyletic?


 Science it is not a democracy, but let see how people thinks about species. Hopefully we will have a good participation, at least more than the voices already heard in this interesting exchange.
The poll will be open and available here and at the left column.

Update: Beware, before you cast your vote please read Zander´s clarification on "phylogenetic monophyly" and "evolutionary monophyly" HERE.

3 comments:

  1. I guess my vote is clear, but at least spell my name right!

    Cheers,

    Brent Mishler

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  2. Does "case by case" mean great if groups are monophyletic but no matter if they are not when data from other sources provides strong evidence for a grouping incongruent with clades in a phylogeny? I hope that this option is the pluralists "out" on this one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. No, "case by case" just means monophyletic sometimes "yes" sometimes "no" in the sense that this "case", species A, has to be monophyletic, but another "case" (species B) does not have to be. It is not a matter of data incongruence or conflicting groupings of the same terminals.

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