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I find this article confused/confusing because it seems to me that it's not clear what its topic should be: is it "phylogenetic systematics" as used by Hennig (and called "cladistics" by its opponents), or is it the whole field of modern methods grouped under this term?
"Phylogenetic systematics" as Hennig used the term is not identical to "cladistics" for two reasons: firstly, "cladistics" was the preferred term of those hostile to "phylogenetic systematics"; secondly, "cladistics" is now used to cover a much wider range of methods than those of "phylogenetic systematics", some of which are directly contradictory to Hennig's methods.
Hennig advocated two main ideas which are related but logically different:
(1) is now accepted as the aim of phylogenetic studies, although some taxonomists are then prepared to name a few paraphyletic groups in special cases, but with full awareness of their nature.
(2) in the way Hennig described it is simply not a feature of modern computer-based methods. Parsimony, which still seems to be the dominant method for analyses based on morphological characters, considers all characters used in the analysis equally, although the choice of characters may be influenced by whether they are considered derived or primitive. Statistical models (Bayesian, etc.) used with molecular data treat all sequences equally, although again the choice of sequences to be used may be based on the selection of homologs. But careful selection of synapomorphies which define clades simply doesn't feature. Although these methods aren't exactly the same as phenetics (numerical taxonomy), they are in many ways more similar than it to Hennig's manual methods.
However, I'm unsure how to fix the article. The Methodology section is particularly confused between the first part – an explanation of Hennig's terminology and methods, and the second part – an over-brief survey of the very different methods used now and their development. Peter coxhead ( talk) 15:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Having thought about the article and the related ones in Wikipedia, I propose that:
Peter coxhead ( talk) 18:12, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
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The first sentence of § Methodology:
The cladistic method interprets each character state transformation implied by the distribution of shared character states among taxa (or other terminals) as a potential piece of evidence for grouping. clarification needed
contains or implies the following technical terms:
— none of which have not been explained adequately — or at all! — to our intended audience: interested laymen. Also, a "method [that] interprets [x] as a potential piece of evidence for [y" sounds awfully vague and … unsystematic. So I've marked it as needing clarification. It's beyond opaque; more akin, perhaps, to a black hole, that actively destroys any attempt at examination! ;-) Will somebody - perhaps a topic expert who is also an expert educator and explainer - please step up and make this sentence — and ideally, the whole article — more accessible to the likes of me? That is, to somebody who is fascinated by the diversity of the natural world, yet sure that scientific methods can help them make sense of it all. yoyo ( talk) 01:06, 19 January 2020 (UTC)
Being that there is no Wikipedia page for the Cladistic Revolution, I assume that this is the article that covers it. However, there is no reference within the article to the term and nor is there a redirection. This is a problem as several Wikipedia articles refer to such a thing as a "Cladistic Revolution". For example: /info/en/?search=Aysheaia
Not being at all familiar with how things are done on Wikipedia, it seems to me that the solution is to create a section within this article to define what the Cladistic Revolution is/was. 122.58.212.69 ( talk) 05:36, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
Wrote precisely delineating paraphyletic groups (grades) are fruitless to precisely delineate, especially for extinct species. There are actually two meanings to this: It is virtually impossible to do, and the results are meaningless. Contenting that both hold. In principle one could define "all descendents of X, which are not the descendents of the last common ancestor of Y and Z", or "all descendents of X which are not descendents of Y", but as stated before, under the mantra of parsimoniousness, one should make a case about why that would be a particular interesting group. It necessarily is another layer of unnecessary complexity, at least while it is still being figured out what the basic relationships are. Lumping e.g. stem groupings together, which is what typically happens, is anti-helpfull, as it appears as a validation that it's ok that it is not further resolved. Further resolving stuff would often reveal that the stem grouping do not belong together, but that the one of them is most closely related to the resulting branch, and that the other stem branches are usually further apart from each other. Purposely ignoring here all kinds of arguments that continued evolution brought certain groups closer together or further apart in the way they live, which probably changed anyway from the moment these branches separated. Jmv2009 ( talk) 16:17, 20 April 2022 (UTC)