[Taxacom] Incongruent phylogeny and geology

[John Grehan]

Antionio,

One could indeed start of with a particular geological reconstruction and
see how phylogeny fits with that or not. You would need to be specific as
to what you see as problematic about Rosen for me to comment on that. When
it comes to asserting geological connections between the Antilles and
continental ?mainland? this does not necessarily indicate anything in
particular about the origin of Antillean biota. One might also take into
consideration geological predictions for the origin of some Greater
Antillean formations out in the Pacific.



One could also examine the spatial relationships between taxa and
geomorphology and see if there are any correlations. Correlations, though
not proof of historical relationship, may led to a predication of such an
association.  Take for example the occurrence of Bontia in relation to the
Myoporeae, the Troidini, Bataceae, Crossosomatales for a Pacific context,
and in particular the nice tectonic boundary of Masteria spiders sandwiched
between the Motagua fault and the Romeral fault zone (see Heads? book for
all these examples).



John Grehan


On Mon, Apr 14, 2014 at 11:18 AM, Antonio L?pez Almirall <cycas at mnhnc.inf.cu
> wrote:

> 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
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