[Taxacom] Panbiogeography

[Michael Heads]

Hi Jason,

Getting back to the facts, a taxacomer just sent me a classic that I hadn't
spotted: a chameleon on Socotra that has a diverse sister group
widespread through the Sahel (Mali to Somalia), around the Mediterranean,
Saudi Arabia and east to India (not on Socotra). It's in Macey et al., 2008
Mol Phylogen Evol 49: 1015.

This is the sort of thing you see in many groups in the Caribbean and the
SW Pacific. It's very simple to explain the pattern by an early break in a
widespread ancestor, somewhere around Socotra. If you want to explain it by
the usual dispersal from the mainland, you have to bring in other, ad hoc
hypotheses. But the main point is just how starkly and beautifully it
highlights the significance of Socotra, whatever the actual mechanism.

Michael


On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 7:08 PM, JF Mate <aphodiinaemate at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Ken. Sorry for replying so late but i am currently travelling around.
> Your optimism is refreshing but ultimately a waste of effort. There is no
> evidence that you can offer them that will satisfy them because you don't
> know (or them I suspect) what they are arguing against. Whereas you, I or
> most others can accept vicariance and dispersal as mechanisms (and have
> said so repeatedly) we are labelled dispersalists. Go figure.
> When you show them clear, factual evidence of organisms being sent across
> the ocean, these events are either "too frequent" or so infrequent that the
> probabilities cannot be calculated and therefore no different to astrology
> (so much for only being interested in data). What you will never be shown
> are the definitions under which they operate. Funny since they are
> interested in patterns and this requires some sort of operational
> definitions. But when a man's livelihood depends on not understanding
> something, then they won't, no matter what you say.
> "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how
> smart you are. If it doesn't agred with experiment, it's wrong." Stuff can
> cross oceans, let them fight facts if they want. I have critters to catch.
>
> Best
>
> Jason
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-- 
Dunedin, New Zealand.

My recent books:

*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics.* 2012. University of California
Press, Berkeley. www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271968

*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. 2014. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge. www.cambridge.org/9781107041028