[Taxacom] Dispersal example

[Fred Schueler]

Quoting Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org>:

> On 2014-04-17 4:26 PM, John Grehan wrote:
>> ...dispersalist have
>> for a long time asserted that chance dispersal can account for any
>> distribution.
>
> Thus dispersal cannot be falsified. It only serves as an explanation
> when all falsifiable alternatives have been falsified. IMO
> panbiogeography has a lot of unnecessary baggage (orthogenesis being a
> major one), but this part makes sense.

* but the idea that dispersalism is an important biogeographical  
factor could be falsified if the taxa that fall out with these  
dispersalist explanations don't match independent assessments of  
dispersal ability (a la Darwin's seawater experiments). In fact, I  
wonder if dispersalism is really a single entity, or if there's not  
really separate hypotheses about the dispersal ability and mechanisms  
of different taxa.

Maybe the fretting about dispersal is an atavistic argument, because  
most of classical dispersalism was about the literally incredible  
dispersals required by the assumption of continental stability, which  
needed to be taken by faith.

fred.
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