[Taxacom] Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification

[Stephen Thorpe]

Well, I guess in practice (unless we are palaeontologists) we would call two sister species a monophyletic group, or else no grouping of extant taxa could be monophyletic (except perhaps for a "paraphyletic species" and its daughter species!)

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 4/10/14, Laurent Raty <l.raty at skynet.be> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paraphyletic groups as natural units of biological classification
 To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
 Received: Saturday, 4 October, 2014, 8:41 PM
 
 On 10/03/2014 11:49 PM,
 Stephen Thorpe wrote:
 > Not necessarily!
 There might be a monophyletic group consisting of two sister
 species (or two sister taxa, one of which is a single
 species). Choose any one, and the residue is
 monophyletic!
 
 A "group
 consisting of two sister species" cannot be
 monophyletic.
 (This definition excludes the
 common ancestor.)
 
 Laurent
 -
 
 
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