Comments on: When trees turn into brambles http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/11/when-trees-turn-into-brambles/ Human evolution, genetics, genomics and their interstices Sat, 26 May 2012 00:28:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: ж http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/11/when-trees-turn-into-brambles/comment-page-1/#comment-103741 ж Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:32:25 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=14661#comment-103741 So we come a little closer to understanding why John Hawks hates the heidelbergensis concept! Still some way to go though, in my case. I suppose his case it that we and Neandert[]als never really split in the first place (though I still think the the 'h' concept has a use). (By which I mean heidelbergensis, not my spelling of Neanderthals :-S .) Yes, there are a number of patterns in evolution that are both recurring and likely to mislead if we're not prepared for them. The repeated evolution of similar new phenotypes is particularly distressing when they spring from the same ancestor. I termed the non-interbreeding examples of this parlines, and it's rife in dinobirds (and never recognised). Your posting here largely concerns such examples but with interbreeding (or in the case of the red wolf, purely repetitions of the same interbreeding with no evolution). At least if there is interbreeding we're excused from resolving a species problem! The rest is 'history'. So we come a little closer to understanding why John Hawks hates the heidelbergensis concept! Still some way to go though, in my case. I suppose his case it that we and Neandert[]als never really split in the first place (though I still think the the ‘h’ concept has a use). (By which I mean heidelbergensis, not my spelling of Neanderthals :-S .)

Yes, there are a number of patterns in evolution that are both recurring and likely to mislead if we’re not prepared for them. The repeated evolution of similar new phenotypes is particularly distressing when they spring from the same ancestor. I termed the non-interbreeding examples of this parlines, and it’s rife in dinobirds (and never recognised). Your posting here largely concerns such examples but with interbreeding (or in the case of the red wolf, purely repetitions of the same interbreeding with no evolution). At least if there is interbreeding we’re excused from resolving a species problem! The rest is ‘history’.

]]> By: Mike Keesey http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/11/when-trees-turn-into-brambles/comment-page-1/#comment-103628 Mike Keesey Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:48:28 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=14661#comment-103628 Excellent post. I think it would be best for us to stop thinking in terms of species, which are supposed to be universal but never work out that way in practice, and think more in terms of taxonomic units, which are contextual and can be as fine or coarse as the context requires. Here's a sort of example of that, using the recent findings on Denisovan ancestry in Oceanians: http://3lbmonkeybrain.blogspot.com/2011/10/human-clades.html Excellent post. I think it would be best for us to stop thinking in terms of species, which are supposed to be universal but never work out that way in practice, and think more in terms of taxonomic units, which are contextual and can be as fine or coarse as the context requires. Here’s a sort of example of that, using the recent findings on Denisovan ancestry in Oceanians: http://3lbmonkeybrain.blogspot.com/2011/10/human-clades.html

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