[Taxacom] Ladderising phylogenetic trees

[Kenneth Kinman]

Dear All,
     I was looking at Laura Novick's webpage, and I am a little troubled
by one statement:  "Our analyses documented persistent misconceptions...
Evolution as an anagenic rather than a cladogenic process."     
      Perhaps the persistent misconception is actually hers in assuming
that speciation is always cladogenic?  I would think a psychologist
would be a little more open-minded about it.
       --------Ken           
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George Hammond wrote:
Dr. Laura Novick, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University, has studied
and published on the way students think and reason with cladograms,
ladderised and not. 
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/novick/evol_diagrams.html 
I haven't read her papers or webpage carefully, but it looks like her
results indicate there are real differences in the way students parse
one or the other. 
regards, 
George