[Taxacom] orangutan outrage

[Paul J. Morris]

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:31:58 -0400
"John Grehan" <jgrehan at sciencebuff.org> wrote:
> Whole genome
> comparaison are also no solution anyway because of the underlying
> problem of not being able to individually recognize apomorphic states
> for base relationships.

I'd disagree with you here, whole genome comparisons are allowing
people to move beyond simple sequence similarity to a
potentially much more powerful level of thinking about larger scale
patterns, in effect, identifying classical homologies in patterns of
gene evolution.  

See, for example, McBride & Arguello, 2007. 
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid039874 

Your point about outgroups, is of course well taken.

-Paul
-- 
Paul J. Morris
Biodiversity Informatics Manager
Harvard University Herbaria/Museum of Comparative Zo?logy
mole at morris.net  AA3SD  PGP public key available