[Taxacom] Renner (2004) and words that dare not speak their names

[Timothy Dickinson]

data are data, and someone can analyze these occurrences again and we'll 
see what we see. what i find odd about this paper (Renner 2004), and its 
publication in IJPS, is that an alternative hypothesis does not seem to 
have been mentioned. in fact, "hypothesis" and "vicariance" appear only 
once each, in the titles of papers cited by the author. what were the 
reviewers, and the editor, thinking???

well,to answer my own question, this paper comes from one of the IJPS 
special supplements, one on "Tropical Intercontinental Disjunctions." 
the lead paper by Givnish and Renner does explore the competing claims 
of dispersal and vicariance, as do some of the other papers. Renner's 
paper appears to be a data-only contribution setting the stage (from a 
particular POV to be sure) for the discussion of amphiatlantic 
disjunctions. the editors for this special issue (Givnish and Renner?) 
give the last word to Robert Thorne ("It is most gratifying to this 
biogeographer to see in the contributions to this volume that the 
zealotry of the recent vicariance biogeographers has returned to 
normalcy with the current acceptance of vicariance, long‐distance 
dispersal, and immigration from the boreotropics as possible 
explanations of intercontinental disjunctions."), so ok, the overall 
perspective seems to be one of vindicating dispersal while accepting 
vicariance.

i think it's unfair to dismiss out of context this one paper (by 
Renner). the other papers in this issue suggest to me that the editors 
and authors *are* thinking about the constraints on the possible 
explanations for the disjunctions they describe.

---tad.

  
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<Tim Dickinson
<Senior Curator Emeritus
<ROM Green Plant Herbarium (TRT)
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<Department of Natural History
<Royal Ontario Museum
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<Toronto  ON
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<URL: http://labs.eeb.utoronto.ca/dickinson/NABFH-I/ (publications on Crataegus)
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