16 messages in edu.ku.nhm.mailman.taxacomRe: [Taxacom] Why Taxonomy does NOT m...| From | Sent On | Attachments |
|---|---|---|
| Donat Agosti | May 4, 2011 4:51 am | |
| Mary Barkworth | May 4, 2011 5:18 am | |
| Vitor Fernandes O. de Miranda | May 4, 2011 5:45 am | |
| Richard Zander | May 4, 2011 6:33 am | |
| Richard Jensen | May 4, 2011 6:57 am | |
| Doug Yanega | May 4, 2011 11:21 am | |
| Richard Jensen | May 4, 2011 12:11 pm | |
| Morgan Jackson | May 4, 2011 6:13 pm | |
| Roger Burks | May 4, 2011 7:09 pm | |
| Fabian Haas | May 11, 2011 1:52 am | |
| Richard Zander | May 11, 2011 6:52 am | |
| Bob Mesibov | May 11, 2011 3:17 pm | |
| Jason Mate | May 12, 2011 3:38 am | |
| Richard Zander | May 12, 2011 9:18 am | |
| Bob Mesibov | May 12, 2011 4:20 pm | |
| Bob Mesibov | May 12, 2011 4:28 pm |
| Subject: | Re: [Taxacom] Why Taxonomy does NOT matter | |
|---|---|---|
| From: | Jason Mate (jfm...@hotmail.com) | |
| Date: | May 12, 2011 3:38:53 am | |
| List: | edu.ku.nhm.mailman.taxacom | |
Just as hard as wrangling your team members will be dealing with incongruence
and fitting it within your evolutionary picture. Who does this now? Is there
anyone who seriously examines incongruence, instead of dismissing it as noise
and an obstacle to discovering the One True Tree?
Regardless of what group is being studied, what I read in the literature
suggests that investigators are looking for evolutionary 'signal' in their data.
The 'signal' is regarded as evolution, the rest isn't. This is a very strange
idea. Surely *all* the data reflect what's happened during evolution?
One man's noise is another man's data, tt is noise if it doesn't apply to the
level you are looking at. When researchers speak of signal and noise I don't
think they are making the distinction between good/bad but between useful (to
me, now) and ''useless''. I think we all do this but in the case of molecular
data you have to deal with the numerous characters which are simply not useful
to you particular question.
From what I have seen and in my limited experience the noise issue is best
dealt with through the
addition of taxa. And here lies a very important contribution that classical
taxonomists make. It is much more difficult to get the material than sequencing;
hence lab-based research is focused on more data from the same taxa instead of
closing gaps. Sometimes ''field'' taxonomists are approached by lab researchers
for specimens. Often the specimens are rare, have small distributions, narrow
phenologies and very specific ecologies, but the assumption out there is that
one can just go to the backyard and pick them up. So the idea that ''modern''
taxonomy doesn't need classical taxonomists is spurious. The simple truth is
that we give out our services for free and then are told that our services have
no value.
Jason
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