FW: Platnick's recent lecture (URL link)

[Thomas Lammers]

Well, it's BOTH, really.

I prefer to think of the ability to interbreed as an indicator of the
degree of HOMOLOGY of the respective genomes.  Surely that concept of
homology can be made to fit a cladistic viewpoint somehow ...

At 04:14 PM 3/7/02 -0500, Bill Shear wrote:
>a common misunderstanding of the Biological Species
>Concept.  Norm states that the retention of the ability to interbreed is a
>plesiomorphy and so could not be used to define a species.  However, the
>ability to interbreed is not the criterion used in the BSC to define a
>species--it is the reproductive isolation of that population from other such
>populations, and that, surely, is an acquired apomorphy.

Thomas G. Lammers, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Curator of the Herbarium (OSH)
Department of Biology and Microbiology
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8640 USA

e-mail:       lammers at uwosh.edu
phone:      920-424-1002
fax:           920-424-1101

Plant systematics; classification, nomenclature, evolution, and
biogeography of the Campanulaceae s. lat.

Webpages:
http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/biology/Lammers.htm
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Resort/7156/lammers.html
http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/biology/herbarium/herbarium.html
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Today's mighty oak is yesterday's nut that stood his ground."
                                                 -- Anonymous