Encroachment and Prohibition (Science and Evolution)

[Thomas Lammers]

At 12:36 PM 11/18/02 -0600, you wrote:
>This is interesting.  I remember being told, when a graduate student in the
>1980's, that "phenetics is dead" as a methodology.  If not, my gut reaction
>is that perhaps it is still useful and used more in revisionary work at the
>genus and lower taxonomic levels, especially in relatively speciose taxa;
>and increasingly less so as one moves up the taxonomic hierarchy to family
>and higher levels.  Is there any validity to this perception?

Of course there is.  Such an attitude is akin to saying, "A hammer is
better than a saw" without specifying the task to be
accomplished.  Cladistics is of no value whatsoever in answering questions
re: circumscription.  It presupposes that you have circumscribed your taxa
and now want to understand relationships among them.  Phenetics is the best
tool for circumscription at the lowest levels of the hierarchy, e.g.,
deciding which populations/exemplars to put in which
species/subspecies.  But it is totally worthless for understanding patterns
of evolution.  I get very nervous trying to use phenetics in anything
larger than a species complex; even in a demonstrably monophyletic genus,
I'd think twice about using phenetics.  But in trying to sort out variation
patterns in a polymorphic species or species complex, I think it is an
exceptional tool.

Persons who are thinking clearly and are intellectually honest with
themselves would see that each has its appropriate usages.  Each has
strengths and weaknesses.  Dismissing phenetics in this way is just part of
the mindset that requires us to promote the new by denigrating the
old.   Workers who take this tack remind me of teeny boppers jumping on the
latest pop-culture fad and loudly deriding those who cling to last year's
fad as "dorks" and "nerds."  It's the same attitude exactly.


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.uwosh.edu/departments/biology/herbarium/herbarium.html
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Resort/7156/lammers.html
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