Biogeographic memory

[John R. Grehan]

>
>I find many of your remarks challenging, and some completely off the mark,
>to the point of being unnecessarily insulting.


>I resent the suggestion that we "censor" Croizat. It suggests that you have
>no notion what censorship really implies. Croizat's books weigh down
>bookshelves all over the world - and nobody ever got fired for citing him.

Perhaps we have different notions of censorship. If one deliberately omits
reference to a particular work relevant to the topic or issue of a paper, then
to me that is a form of censorship - self censorship I would agree.

>I even wonder whether any paper ever was rejected merely for citing
>Croizat.

I can confirm that has happened.

>That would begin to come closer to real censorship, but is not
>something we can be accused of.

If censorship of libraries and publications by editors is the definition of
'real censorship' then ok.

>That most people (including us) refuse to cite him in every paper dealing
>with biogeography is something completely different.

I think this just illustrates that we have different concepts of
censorship. In my concept
it does not matter whether the censorship is self imposed or not.

>On our part, it may
>simply be explained by our aim to develop the field of cladistic
>biogeography - integrating phylogenetic information into biogeography.

By integrating phylogenetic information into 'biogeography' one must
consider the
'biogeography' I would think. And for the subject in question Croizat
certainly informs
on the 'biogeography' of the area in question.

>Croizat's view - and yours (going by your book with Craw and Heads) is that
>biogeography informs phylogenetic reconstruction. This alone makes the
>whole Panbiogeographic attempt irrelevant to our aim, which was to do
>biogeography informed by phylogeny

If one is to consider how something is informed by phylogeny one would have to
consider the biogeography so I don't see this as a substantiated rationale for
censoring reference to what Croizat informed of the biogeography in question.

>"declare", "asserted" - these are strong words to paraphrase our abstract
>in which we state that two patterns "can be expected"

ok I think I agree that I may have stated this too strongly.


>For my part, I may still be haunted by the ghost of Van Steenis who was
>rather dismissive of Croizat after having found that Croizat sometimes
>simply had his facts wrong.

Yes sometimes Croizat did have facts wrong, sometimes of his own
responsibility,
sometimes because the source was wrong. This is something that is probably
true of any major work.


>More importantly, my eyes always glaze over
>after having had to read one page by Croizat, never with less than two
>disparaging remarks towards unspecified or specified persons. Or towards
>the theory of evolution.

This is a bit exaggerated as there are many pages without disparaging remarks.
In general those remarks were directed towards the quality of work by persons.
As far as I am aware he made disparaging remarks about the theory of
evolution,
only the Darwinian theoy of evolution.

>Then, eager to learn something about panbiogeography from a more concise
>book, I open Craw, Grehan and Heads only to be baffled already by their
>statement with regard to the very first distribution maps they show (fig
>1-1): "the distributions of these groups are geographically similar" and
>"are not distinguishable according to their different means of dispersal"
>In fact, one group (freshwater fish) is restricted to areas that have (or
>have had in the  recent past) a land connection, the other (butterflies!)
>extends to far-out oceanic islands that certainly never were connected to
>the mainland area! How is it possible to ignore such differences?

We did not ignore the differences. The distributions are similar, we never
said they were identical. One will note that the butterfly is in areas where
the fish is absent, and visa versa.

I think the differences between Hovenkamp and myself illustrate different
perspectives
on biogeography and evolution and the role of historical contributions in
current
analyses and insights.

John Grehan
Frost Entomological Museum
Pennsylvania State University
Department of Entomology
501 ASI Building
University Park, PA 16802. USA.

Phone: (814) 863-2865
Fax: (814) 865-3048

Frost Museum
http://www.ento.psu.edu/home/Frost/index.html