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From: felsenst@entropy.ms.washington.edu (Joe Felsenstein)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Phenetics & Cladistics
Message-ID: <672@entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, 11-Nov-87 23:12:23 EST
Article-I.D.: entropy.672
Posted: Wed Nov 11 23:12:23 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Nov-87 06:37:18 EST
References: <8892@utzoo.UUCP>
Reply-To: uw-evolution!joe@entropy.UUCP (Joe Felsenstein)
Organization: Dept. of Genetics, U of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 36
Keywords: phenetics, cladistics

In article <8892@utzoo.UUCP> rising@utzoo.UUCP (Jim Rising) writes:
>
>Joel Craycraft likes to call Sibley & Ahlquist's DNA-DNA hybridization
>work "phenetic" to (I think) needle Sibley (it's Craycraft's idea of the
>ultimate insult, and taken by Sibley as such).  I confess, based on the
>definitions given above I would not object to calling Sibley's work
>"phenetic," but without implied criticism.  I suspect that cladists often
>throw out much useful information in what is often a quixotic search for
>phylogeny.

This points out the confusion between methods for inferring phylogenies
(DNA hybridization vs. parsimony, for example) and philosophies of
classification (strictly monophyletic vs. based on overall similarity).
From talking to Charles Sibley I know that he believes strongly that *all*
groups in the classification system should be *strictly* monophyletic.  That
makes him a cladist in his views on classification, maybe a stricter one
than Joel Cracraft.

But if his methods of inferring phylogeny are judged "phenetic" than
we are in a never-never land populated by cladists who are pheneticists
and pheneticists who are cladists, etc. ad nauseam.

I say let's use the terms "pheneticist" and "cladist" to characterize
someone's views on classification, and not to name-call about methods
of inferring phylogeny.  Then maybe we'll be able to see that all data
has some information in it, and all methods their assumptions and
limitations.   Then we can work on properties and assumptions and 
get away from name-calling.  'Nuf said.

-----
Joe Felsenstein, Dept. of Genetics SK-50, Univ. of Washington, Seattle WA 98195
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