Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance Online!

Every now and then a scientific discipline undergoes a revolution, an episode that changes the way a subject is perceived, the way it is understood and undertaken – a new vision emerges that prevents a return to the subject matter as it was before, a paradigm change, some genuine progress. In the last century, there was a revolution in phylogenetics and systematics that began with the work of entomologist Willi Hennig (1950, 1966) and its interpretation by Lars Brundin (1966), a chironomid specialist. The need for revolution was succinctly put by palaeontologist Colin Patterson, some years later

“By about 1960 palaeontology had achieved such a hold on phylogeny reconstruction that there was a commonplace belief that if a group had no fossil record its phylogeny was totally unknown and unknowable” (Patterson 1987:8).

That ‘commonplace belief’ was eventually rejected in favour of determining relationship from evidence (characters, homologies) provided by organisms (living or extinct), a shift from the preoccupation of discovering ancestry directly from the fossil record to determining common ancestry. As Brundin later noted, “little by little some palaeontologists have perceived that Hennig’s principles of phylogenetic systematics meant a revolution to their science.” Hennig called his approach Phylogenetic Systematics, the title of his 1966 book (Hennig 1966), an approach that eventually became known as cladistics, hence the cladistic revolution: the cladistic revolution overturned the central position of palaeontology in determining phylogenetic relationships: turning Ernst Haeckel’s Systematische Phylogenie into Hennig’s Phylogenetic Systematics.

By the early 1980s three books were published, all dealing with cladistics. Each approached its topic from a different perspective: Phylogenetic Analysis and Paleontology by Joel Cracraft & Niles Eldredge (Columbia University Press, New York, 1981), Phylogenetics: The Theory and Practice of Phylogenetic Systematics by Ed Wiley (New York: Wiley Interscience, 1981) and Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance by Gary Nelson and Norman Platnick (Columbia University Press, New York, 1981).

While all three books have their merits, it is the last, Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance that broke into new ground; and it is the last that, some 28 years after its first appearance and almost impossible to get a copy, is being made available by the University of California Press at http://www.ucpress.edu/books/series/spsy.php

Cladistics, as outlined in Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance, might be understood as a reaction to phylogeny reconstruction, or more specifically, Haeckel’s paleontological version of it, developed by Matthews and Simpson. Systematics and Biogeography is a detailed critique of Haeckel’s legacy and an outline of what can be understood as natural classification, as first sketched by Candolle in his Théorie élémentaire de la Botanique – the question addressed being: How do ancestor—descendant relationships relate to natural classification?

Since Systematics and Biogeography there have been discourses on ‘tree-thinking’, ‘group-thinking’ and ‘population-thinking’, none seemingly appropriate for classification: Classification (and phylogeny, and systematics) are all best referred to as relationship-thinking, of which Systematics and Biogeography is a meditation on.

Download this book now from the University of California Press website – and see if you can start another revolution.

FSB: Reviews

Finally, reviews of Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography are out!

Norman Platnick has a review in Systematic Biology and Andy Brower has published one in Systematics & Biodiversity.

Unfortunately the links are only limited to subscribers or those with institutional access.

References
Brower, A.V.Z. (2009) Science as a Pattern David M. Williams and Malte C. Ebach. Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography Springer Science+Business Media, New York, 2008, xvii + 309 pp, ISBN 9780387727288. Systematics and Biodiversity, 7: 345-346.
Platnick, N.I. (2009). Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography. Systematic Biology, 58: 279-281.

The Giraffe's Long Neck

Craig Holdrege at the Nature Institute has published a great book titled The Giraffe's Long Neck: from evolutionary fable to whole organism. Here an excerpt from my review in The Systematist

"The book consists of four chapters that cover existing theories of giraffe form, notably its long neck, physiology, development, ecology and evolution. The text is interspersed with elegant black and white line drawings and the text is written in an easy conversational style. The first chapter “Evolutionary stories falling short” is a critique of present evolutionary theories in relation to the giraffe's neck. Like most, I recall being taught sometime in school that the giraffe's long neck is an example of an adaptation, an explanation that championed neo-Darwinian theory over “inferior” Lamarckianism. In our texts there was a picture of an upright giraffe apparently feeding, with the story that by having a long neck the giraffe could reach the rare green foliage and therefore survive. Since no one in class experiences the giraffe directly, we accept the story and go no further. This is the starting point for Holdrege's argument. In considering the giraffe feeding it appears to have a long neck. With legs splayed cumbersomely to reach down while drinking, giraffes appear to have awkwardly short necks. What do we as taxonomists gain from this insight? Holdrege has exposed advantageous adaptation as an evolutionary fable, showing that in focusing on a single part of the giraffe we have lost sight of the whole organism" (The Systematist 2007 28:13-14)

The Giraffe's Long Neck: from evolutionary fable to whole organism is available from the Nature Institute website.

References

Holdrege, C. 2005. The Giraffe's Long Neck: from evolutionary fable to whole organism. Nature Institute Perspectives 4. The Nature Institute, Ghent, New York, pp.104. USD14.00.