Encroachment and Prohibition (Science and Evolution)

[Richard Jensen]

Thomas Lammers wrote:

>  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.

I think this is a far too harsh statement.  Phenetic methods have been
demonstrated to be just as effective as cladistic methods when used to
hypothesize phylogenies.  Of course, phenetic methods do not have this as their
objective, so they should not be generally used to do so.  Estabrook introduced
the concept convex phenetics for recognizing monophyletic groups in phenetic
analyses.  The method has been little used, but it is a logically sound approach
to constructing phylogenetic hypotheses.  I suspect the fact that it has the
word "phenetics" in its name doomed it right out of the box.

Dick

--
Richard J. Jensen              | tel: 574-284-4674
Department of Biology      | fax: 574-284-4716
Saint Mary's College         | e-mail: rjensen at saintmarys.edu
Notre Dame, IN 46556    | http://www.saintmarys.edu/~rjensen