FW: Islands, Science and Creationism

[Curtis Clark]

At 11:22 AM 4/16/2002, Richard Jensen wrote:
>I agree with the first part of this statement, but can't buy in to the second
>part (i.e.,
>an organism's current location carries traces of its entire geographic
>history).
>Knowing that species X is endemic to cedar glades in middle Tennessee tells us
>nothing about it geographic history.

The fact that species X also has feature 3 tells us nothing about its
evolutionary history. In both cases, we need context--comparison with the
distribution of character states in other taxa, the distribution of taxa in
other areas. And I would venture (though John might disagree) that neither
phylogeny nor biogeography is satisfactory in the absence of the other. (As
a phylogeneticist, I am persuaded that phylogeny is more important to
biogeography that the reverse.)



--
Curtis Clark                 http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department             Voice (909) 869-4062
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