Coopers and Cladistics
This week we will discuss early ideas on estimating evolutionary polarity of characters (more commonly called “traits" these days). Many papers now being
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This week we will discuss early ideas on estimating evolutionary polarity of characters (more commonly called “traits" these days). Many papers now being published in high impact journals claim the discovery of ancestral character traits, yet the authors rarely consider the underlying logic of their conclusions.
We will discuss this based on a short paper...
Schmidt, M. (2016) Hennig, Ax, and present-day mainstream cladistics, on polarising characters. Peckiana 11: 35-42.
A clear presentation of these principles in language that is relatively free of Hennigian jargon can be found in:
Maddison, W.P., Donoghue, M.J. & Maddison, D.R. (1984) Outgroup analysis and parsimony. Systematic Zoology 33: 83-103.
Meet at 5:30 pm in the Fellows Bar area of University House.
Coopers and Cladistics is a long-running evolutionary biology discussion group held every second Thursday at University House, ANU. Please contact Mike Crisp if you would like to be included on the C&C email list.
Location
Fellows Bar, University House.