[Taxacom] Dispersal example

[Michael Heads]

Hi Curtis,

For me, panbiogeography is just looking at lots of distributions (of plants
and animals) and the regional geology, in detail.  The theory is secondary,
and the tools of the trade are good, big monographs, maps of your area, a
gazetteer and a good pair of boots.

Accepting mutation-driven evolution, or any other theory, is certainly not
necessary. But Nei's idea is very interesting, and it means that you don't
have to accept that particular morphology has been 'designed' for the
'good' for the species. Apart from Nei's book, you might like:


Lynch, M. 2007. The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of
organismal complexity. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA*,
104, S8597-S8604.



Lynch, M. 2007. *The origins of genome architecture*. Sunderland, MA:
Sinauer Associates. (Especially the last chapter).



Michael



On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org> wrote:

> On 2014-04-20 2:27 PM, Michael Heads wrote:
> > Most of us were taught the old idea that mutation is random and that
> > the course of evolution is determined by selection. But many
> > geneticists now think that mutation is biased and that this bias can
> > in itself determine evolution. This has been argued by Masatoshi Nei,
> > one of the pioneers of molecular biology and evolution (his work has
> > been cited 196000 times). His latest book - nice and short and clear -
> > is called 'Mutation-driven evolution'. (OUP, 2013)  This idea is
> > compatible with Darwin's later work (post-1859) where he rejects his
> > earlier panadaptationism (this is always 'overlooked' by the so-called
> >  'neodarwinians'), and also with Croizat's 'orthogenesis'.
>
> I'm familiar with the arguments (although I have not studied them
> deeply), but it is unclear to me whether and how they are necessary to
> the basic tenets of panbiogeography. You and others seem to promote it
> as a "clean" science, unencumbered by extraneous theories and
> data-focused, but if indeed it relies on a specific mode of evolution
> being pervasive, that seems to be a weak spot. If someone showed
> conclusively that mutation bias played no role in evolution, would
> panbiogeography fall?
>
> --
> Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
> Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
> Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768
>
>
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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