Taxacom: supposed evidence of Pacific ignuana dispersal

Sun Mar 23 22:17:48 CDT 2025

Interesting critical comment from a Creationist site:

Isn?t evolution wonderful? Give it plenty of time, and stuff happens. It
must be true. PNAS published it with peer review. Peer review guarantees
the truth of this ?extraordinary oceanic dispersal event? that must have
happened because a species of swimming iguana was once observed going 1/25
that distance between islands in the same chain. That and comparative
genomics led them to this as the best of ?hypothesized biogeographic
scenarios.? The main reason, though, is the requirement to believe in
evolution and deep time. ?Oceanic islands have played a pivotal role in the
development of biogeographic and evolutionary theory,? the authors say.

The Crazy Rafting Iguanas ? CEH
<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcrev.info%2F2025%2F03%2Fcrazy-rafting-iguanas%2F&data%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C34aa209ed73148b73bc608dd6a828ae7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638783831550871326%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=N8kAXgl%2FWpvlQXMOMI3IfyuM6NeUnPngCAUbdF6yCcM%3D&reserved=0>

On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 9:45?PM John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm inclined not to agree. If one wants peer reviewers to be only those
> who know all the literature on any one subject then I think one may be
> asking for the impossible. For example, when I agree to review a paper on
> some taxonomy of my group of interest I do not pretend to have total recall
> of the literature and all its content, and necessarily even then how to
> always be able to judge what is cited and to what degree, and that's just
> the simple case of taxonomic work. Perhaps in the future AI could be used
> by journals to 'scan' the literature in some way, and perhaps at least
> alert to any potential citations that may be addressed (or not). In this
> case for the iguanas - I am not blaming editors or reviewers for missing
> content or other issues. That is for the authors. And most biogeographers
> don't have a problem with what I see is a problem anyway.
>
> Cheers, John
>
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 9:22?PM Ross Wellington <rwrossco at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> It's also indicative of the pathetic (or corrupted?) editorial standard
>> of today.  Where anything gets into print and editors or reviewers have
>> zero to no knowledge of the prior published literature and hence are
>> incapable of requiring the writers to incorporate considerations of all the
>> uncited material.
>>
>> Fundamentally this means in large part PEER REVIEW has become PRINO
>>
>> R
>>
>> *Ross Wellington*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *AES - Australian Environmental SurveysProprietor and Senior
>> EcologistAccredited Biodiversity ExpertConservation PlannerEnvironmental
>> Educator*
>> *0407 489489*
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2025 at 10:58?AM Raymond Hoser The Snakeman <
>> viper007 at live.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>> John and others,
>>>
>>> This is EXACTLY how Wuster, Britton and their cohort do herpetology.
>>> Cite their own defective rubbish and fake it that everything else does
>>> not exist.
>>> That way they "discover" and name everything as well ....
>>> ------------------------------
>>> *From:* Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> on behalf of John Grehan
>>> via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
>>> *Sent:* Friday, 21 March 2025 7:32 AM
>>> *To:* taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>>> *Subject:* Taxacom: supposed evidence of Pacific ignuana dispersal
>>>
>>> Some of you may have seen this as it's been splashed around widely on the
>>> propaganda circuit.
>>>
>>> Iguanas rafted more than 8,000 km from North America to Fiji PNAS 2025
>>> Vol.
>>> 122 No. 12 e2318622122
>>> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.2318622122&data%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C34aa209ed73148b73bc608dd6a828ae7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638783831550888682%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Dl%2B24gd73y5vsf8b5JOLh9CAkVqA704KTcicaWznCVM%3D&reserved=0
>>> <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1073%2Fpnas.2318622122&data%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C34aa209ed73148b73bc608dd6a828ae7%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638783831550898044%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C60000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=DzWuKtOLl%2FH7PbpICxzhutujrzbm3M24c4%2F0EHmn4ao%3D&reserved=0>
>>>
>>> It's just another duplication of the same old trash. Abstract claims that
>>> ?Here, we investigate the occurrence and timing of the greatest known
>>> long-distance oceanic dispersal event in the history of terrestrial
>>> vertebrates?the rafting of iguanas from North America to Fiji.? Trouble
>>> with this is that it makes out that this ?long-distance oceanic dispersal
>>> event? is an established scientific fact when it is not.
>>>
>>>
>>> Then they assert that ?Iguanas are large-bodied herbivores that are
>>> well-known overwater dispersers, including species that colonized the
>>> Caribbean and the Gal?pagos islands.? when there is absolutely no
>>> empirically based evidence that the Galapagos iguanas ever dispersed
>>> overwater to the Galapagos.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And the central rot (as in decay) of their claims is the same as all the
>>> other center of origin-chance dispersal recipes: The divergence estimate
>>> is
>>> based on fossil calibration which can only render minimum ages. Anything
>>> else (such as priors) is conjecture. So their timeline is erroneous in
>>> this
>>> respect. The other is that their ancestral-areas analysis is simply a
>>> recipe that cannot empirically distinguish between chance dispersal and
>>> vicariance as either can generate the same phylogenetic area sequence.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Given their calling attention to the Galapagos it seems an incredible
>>> oversight to have missed Heads & Grehan 2021 on Galapagos biogeography,
>>> including the Fiji connection. I've seen this before, where there is a
>>> narrow range of citations restricted to the same school of thought.
>>> Anything else does not exist. This, then, is the pinnacle of academic
>>> achievement in the US (maybe a good argument for the government trashing
>>> science?).
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers, John
>>>
>>>
>>> I
>>> --
>>>
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>
> --
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