Talk:Primitive (phylogenetics)

message: I just noticed this article has been flagged for possible removal to Wiktionary. Since the quality of being primitive (basal) is a fairly important concept in biology, any help in expanding this bare stub into an encyclopedic article would be appreciated. Some ideas:
*Include what methods biologists use to determine whether an organism is primitive or derived. (For example: morphology, genetics)
*Explain how the quality of being primitive is subjective, based on comparisons.
*Explain how these comparisons relate to cladistics.
Ginkgo100 22:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: User:LifeScience has kindly expanded this article, although it still needs some work, particularly citations. (Unfortunately, my books will be packed for at least another couple of months.) I wonder if it might be better to merge derived and basal together with this one. --Ginkgo100talk 20:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have expanded the article, though the writing needs a lot of attention and I am time-constrained. I don't agree that merging this article with the cladistic or phylogenetic material would be worth while; primitive isn't really a modern technical term, as I hope readers will agree. JonRichfield (talk) 13:37, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: The page you quote from Gould has nothing to do with the sentence you attached it to. -68.107.137.178 (talk) 06:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, fair enough. Note however that while we are being non-personal, I did NOT change the text to fit the citation; I changed it because the wording was nonsensical and I gave the book as a citation because Gould included a lucid remark on the topic. It was nothing to do with the original wording. You SURELY can't take seriously "resembling the first living things" for "primitive"? Even the wording preceding my recent edits refuted that. I now have made extensive associated changes, still omitting that citation. Please respond here with suggestions, including the current suitability of that citation, which is a useful one because most readers could access it easily and it is an easy read. I am not averse to making further changes, nor even to supporting any acceptable edits you make, but it is a lot more constructive generally a lot more productive to reply to assailable points in the talk page rather than applying large-scale reversions because of failure to approve local regions of text. JonRichfield (talk) 08:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation needed 

message: I expected a merge discussion heading to have been automatically added, since there's a merge proposal on the page, but it hadn't.
I weakly oppose a merge - primitive applies to traits, and basal applies to clades. I would support a merge into ancestral (phylogenetics) or an equivalent if it exists, or a redirect if it doesn't. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: See the last comment in the section above for earlier proposal. I'm not sure the distinction you outline is clear cut. Clades were called primitive too, and traits can be basal as well. The terms overlap/are interchangeable, hence the merge suggestion. FunkMonk (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

text: On further perusal I see the equivalent is plesiomorphy and symplesiomorphy. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Those are more specific to traits. But again, primitive/basal can refer to both traits and clades, and are much more generic. FunkMonk (talk) 18:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you have any examples FunkMonk? In a scientific context, primitive (or more commonly ancestral) should only be used to refer to characters. People have, and still do, refer to organisms or clades as primitive, but this is an incorrect usage. Similarly, how can a trait be basal? (See the UCMP Glossary of Phylogenetics for a non-technical reference)Michaplot (talk) 04:34, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, don't take my word for it, it is easy to find examples. If you just Google "basal trait" for example, numerous scholarly examples pop up. FunkMonk (talk) 05:50, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge