[Taxacom] Incongruent phylogeny and geology

Mon Apr 14 10:18:26 CDT 2014

Dear colleague:
 You ask me. which I consider as geologic discrepancies and contradictions 
with other groups. To answer this, it is necessary to remember three obvious 
premises that often forget:
1.    When the life arrived, the planet was. Therefore the independent 
variable is the planet that can exist and to evolve without the life. The 
life is not able to at least to exist without the planet.
2.    The previous dispersal to a process vicariante is not unique and 
uniform, but continuous and throughout the time, and its intensity varies in 
each moment. This means that the history of the planet is singular while the 
history of the biota is the sum of many histories. Different history for 
each lineage and the time in that it exists. Therefore, the processes 
vicariantes are unique but it gathers many dispersal histories. Of this I 
have many examples demonstrated by any way.
3.     The geologic processes are recurrent and reticulate. The evolution of 
the alive beings is only dichot?mic and upward.
.
What today is the Archipelago where I live and I work, they are oceanic 
islands where for exception some lineages that could be previous to the 
division of Pangea appear. These islands, among both America are, except for 
Cuba, in the Caribbean plate, originated during the Cretaceous. In Eocene it 
began to appear first current big Antilles. However, from the Jurassic one 
there had always temporary islands.
This archipelago has only had two short contacts with the continents in the 
last 40 million years. The first during the glaciation of the Oligocene one 
through Dutch Antilles, and the second through the crest of Cayman to little 
ends before beginning the Quaternary one.
There are many  geological evidences that prove that said until here. Also, 
those statements are distinguished in the patterns of combined distribution 
of almost three thousand vegetable species. These results endorse that it 
was in those two moments that began the main vicariantes processes in the 
Antilles.
Therefore any analysis that is made should begin leaving of these premises, 
and from there to determine how much and why each individual lineage takes 
away from the general rules.  Because there are always deviations, and that 
it is a premise to keep in mind, since it is there where the biogeography 
can support to the geologists. Of this I also have good examples.
Extreme example on inverse reasoning is the work of Rosen it has more than 
enough Western Indies. First make the filogenia of their group. About that 
dichotomy it defines the distribution patterns for a simple substitution. 
The interesting thing is that starting from so flimsy arguments it generates 
an entire theory on the history of the biota, and with it of the evolution 
of Insular Caribbean.  Maybe for the world it was spectacular, but for us 
those that we live and we work in the Western Indies, it didn't pass of a 
joke based on the absurdity.
Thank You
Antonio
-----Original Message-----
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
To: Antonio L?pez Almirall <cycas at mnhnc.inf.cu>
Cc: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 15:22:43 -0400
Subject: Re: Incongruent phylogeny and geology

Antionio,

I fully agree, geology and evolution are not in-congruent. What are 
sometimes in-congruent are particular hypotheses of geological history and 
particular biogeographic patterns, but this in-congruence does not indicate 
an absence of relationship between the two. Also, particular biogeographic 
approaches may be problematic, but others perhaps less so. It all depends on 
what you mean by contradictions between other groups and geological 
evidence.

John Grehan

On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 12:08 PM, Antonio L?pez Almirall 
<cycas at mnhnc.inf.cu> wrote:
For me, geology and evolution are not total incongruent, but we have to be 
carefull with interpretation of information, because biology and geology has 
ith own laws, and as I saw, there are not so many people has this in mind. 
It is the example of Rosen who wrote a paper about our islands, that can be 
very beautiful for his goup, but with hundreds of contradictions with the 
distribution  other groups and with geological evidences.
Antonio L?pez Almirall
-----Original Message-----
From: John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com>
To: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, Portal 
<biogeography at listes.upmc.fr>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:32:19 +1300
Subject: Incongruent phylogeny and geology

There was some criticism of the idea that incongruent phylogeny and 
particular geological events was just an escape route to avoid falsification 
(or words to that effect). It may seem that way in general, but when one 
gets down to specifics there is more to the picture. A classic example is 
that of contrasting NZ-SAm and Aust-SAm relationshipswhere that may 
represent a geological connection between NZ and SAm via West Antarctica and 
Australia connected via East Antarctica so that the patterns evolved in 
association with Jurassic-Cretaceous extension in the West Antarctic Rift 
System. I may have oversimplified so it would be best to read the section on 
this in Heads' book who also points out that this pattern was recognized by 
Brundin (1966).

John Grehan 