[Taxacom] Why character-tracking doesn't happen?

[John Grehan]

A tree trunk is an elephant trunk that turned up in the 'wrong' place.
Sorry, I could not resist.

John Grehan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-
> bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Curtis Clark
> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 12:10 AM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Why character-tracking doesn't happen?
> 
> On 2008-09-14 20:08, Don.Colless at csiro.au wrote:
> > For once I find myself agreement with our resident gadfly. Homoplasy
> > is a NAME that we give to a set of phenomena that happen to have a
> > similar result - viz. parallelism, convergence, and reversal. Each
> > has its own explanation.
> 
> Homoplasy is false homology. It's a mistake. As I used to tell
students,
> if I mistakenly thought the trunk of an elephant and the trunk of an
oak
> tree were homologous, to me that would be homoplasy, but the students
> might regard it as stupidity.
> 
> --
> Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
> Director, I&IT Web Development                   +1 909 979 6371
> University Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona
> 
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