Talk:Clade

message: I'm a casual reader of many of the science articles here on Wiki. This topic is very interesting, but the article is impenetrable to me. I thought to check the talk page for enlightenment, and find an absolutely gargantuan amount of nearly religious dissection of all of this. I can't believe that it can't be described well, even as a base abstract concept. A few illustrations would be VERY helpful, especially a side-by-side description of the same group, expressed as a clade, and taxanomically (which, I realize, may not be an actual word). If this is the current, or perhaps a current methodology, then there must be some intro textbook which makes this understandable. - superβεεcat  04:03, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of what you so aptly describe as "nearly religious dissection" is commentary from one banned user, Mats Envall/Consist.  Anyway, you're not the first to comment that this article is hard to follow, so I'll add an  template to the article to help alert other editors. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:32, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Btw there's a Wikipedia tool called "clade" which draws these kind of clad-like diagrams. I was searching for it (I've used it before) and came across this article.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:50, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

text: Can you be more specific? There were major changes to the article in September and October 2012, which attempted to address inadequacies. Remaining problems can be addressed only if they can be identified. Peter Brown (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Difficult article 

message: Cladistics is no doubt parsimonious and so is prose, especially encyclopedic. However, there is only so much you can do with parsimony. You can't apeak without speaking. You cannot explain the whole history of the world in a single introductory paragraph. When Hawking proposed to represent the unified grand field with a single variable, phi, members of the astonished audience exclaimed, phi? That's it, phi? So, I find the introduction to this article somewhat too parsimonious. I plan to expand it a little. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you (or I) need SOME space to explain things in a meaningful and connected manner.Dave (talk) 11:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: The parsimony, the parsimony

message: This section is written from a moral point of view and the editor sprinkles it amply with prejudcial pronouncements. We are to see taxonomy as the dead hand of the past weighing on the minds of the living like an alp. The taxonomists because of their moral turpitude developed this rigid scheme to keep the young free thinkers of today in bondage but they like anyopne under 30 anywhere have developed their own savior study of cladistics with which they are going to save biology with the one and true way. One almost wants to throw the pope in there somewhere just for good measure. We have had to listen to this malarky for something over several hundred years through Martin Luther, Karl Marx the puritans and a host of other saviors now long forgotten. Excuse me, but I just can't resist. Cladistics is not a savior. It is not going to replace taxonomy. It is just a passing fad, and it is not in the slightest degree any less rigid than Linnaean taxonomy or any more progressive or anything else more. The reptiles include birds? Give me a break! We aren't going to see an end to paraphyly in my day or any of yours either. Cladistics contains a relatively objective assessment of the merits and shortcomings of each system, although one commentator remarks that it is not as objective as he would like. Compared to this it is the soul of blandness.
What we have here are two different systems with two different intents. Neither system by itself is adequate to scientifically portray life on Earth as we see it now. We want information that is presented by both systems and the classification of living things is making such adjustments to either as seems best for the data available at the time. We aren't interested in having the personification of cladistics contront the father figure of taxonomy in an adolescent or post-adolescent manner; many of us are beyond that now, me by quite a bit. I'm going through there and will try to add some equilibrium of language and viewpoint. If I fail back me up.Dave (talk) 16:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that the presentation could be much more neutral. Check the lead of Linnean taxonomy, which employs more measured language than what you see here. One problem is that it is far from clear that there is a well-defined school called Linnean taxonomy, with known precepts. There is a school of thought called cladistics, which (though this article doesn't make it clear) is not universally supported by biologists who work in the field of systematics.  Though there *are* people who call themselves cladists, boiling down their exact teaching is not a simple matter.  (Clades are common to the two schools of classification). I am not sure that there are people who call themselves 'Linnean taxonomists.' It might be better to use 'rank-based taxonomy', but then finding references to fill out the story might be quite time-consuming, since biologists who write on this topic (on whichever side) are not famous for their clarity or brevity.  To avoid the difficult task of writing a full story complete with inline citations, it might be better to have a shorter and less-detailed article with big effort at neutrality. EdJohnston (talk) 17:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree to bout of you. I think the key concept here is KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid. Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Edit: I have now rewritten and restructured the article entirely. I have substituted the examples with some that better illustrate the strong points of cladistics (Lobopodia), and one that clearly illustrate what happens when trees changes. I've put in a few sources too. I hope you like it. Petter Bøckman (talk) 09:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I like it. It was a source of some chagrin to me that these earlier articles reamined in such a juvenile condition. I feel that I have to make them comprehensible before I can move on to other things that use the terminology. If I've done anything to stimulate your further interest that's just as good. My bottom line is clarity (and correcness of format). So, I will start in again at the top. If everything seems fine I will take off the clarity tag (which was on there previously). If not I will try to make it clear, but don't hesitate on my account to change any change I might make for the better. Since you are on the aricle, I may resort to inline clarity tags, purely to get you attention. Thanks for taking a hand.Dave (talk) 12:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: As you can see, English is not my first language. For this article to be good, someone need to check for obvious language bugs. Having grown up in the University system on academic publications, my English probably flows somewhat unevenly. Also, I'm not a cladistican, I'm actually a die-hard Linnaeanist, so some of the concepts may be a bit off. Petter Bøckman (talk) 12:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Updating updating taxonomy

message: "Differences between a Linnaean/apomorphy-based clades and a node-based ones become obvious when the phylogenetic hypothesis changes. When two species previously considered closely related are found to belong to different groups (e.g. the giant panda and the red panda), one of the species will be taken out of the Linnaean unit (in this case the "pandas" of the bear family) and transfered to a more appropriate unit or given it's own (the Ailuridae). In cladistics, the unit "pandas", the giant panda + the red panda remain, but the clade is now known to contain all bears as well as mustelids, racoons and kind, skunks and seals.The pandas are chosen as an example only. There have been no cladistic naming proposal for a "giant panda + red panda clade". The name would be synonymous with Arctoidea, a name proposed for "bearlike" carnivores in 1869.Wesley-Hunt, Gina D., and John J. Flynn (2005). "Phylogeny of the Carnivores". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology no 3: pp 1-28."
Well, I've been pondering this and researching it for a while. Ostensibly this is an example of how the classification changes if the phylogenetic hypothesis does; that is, some original classification was apomorpy-based but the classifiers saw the true light when they had a node-base cladogram. Then we have this very strange note, which denies there ever was such a classification, but this is only an illustrative example. What? Are we making up examples here? With all that expertise we have to invent examples, we can't find any real ones? I have before me from my collection a book by George B. Schaller (the original gorilla man) called The Last Panda. He has a whole appendix on the topic entitled The Panda as Panda. Detailing the history of the classification he points out that it was always troublesome. Some put the two pandas in either the bears or the raccoons and others split them between the two. So, there was no standard classification based on one synapomorphy. Some thought they were related, some not, based on intuition of apomorphies. The later node-based cladograms didn't offer us anything new or anything different, they only confirmed a more distant relationship. Therefore this is bad example; we want something that was apomorphic and is now nodish and is substantially different, if indeed we need such an example at all.Dave (talk) 03:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, the pandas was a spur of the moment thing. The example that was used, old Aunty Archy was really very bad. Not only was it just used to ridicule Linnaean systematics based on a misconception, it also failed to show the real difference between the systems. What we really need here is a case of a group being moved to a different part of the tree in fairly recent time. The red panda was the only one that truck my mind. The point here is to illustrate the difference between the two basic approaches. EDIT: Previously unrelated groups found to be related (e.g. even-toed ungulates and cetaceans) does not really work as one is lumped into the other under bout systems. We need case where well known groups have been split up in recent time. The alternative is to explain the process without an example. Petter Bøckman (talk) 13:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: And years and years later I come across a relevant example: The Euchordata which was proposed for lancelets and vertebrates back when the two were thought to be more closely related. Now that the urochordates have taken on the sister group position, Euchordata would be synonymous with Chordata and discarded as a junior synonym. Litt: Key Transitions in Animal Evolution (2010), P 21. Petter Bøckman (talk) 23:54, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Pandas a bad example

message: The article was tagged with a "confusing" tag in 2009, well before the current rewrite. It is still confusing? How do we go about determining if it is now an acceptable read? Ask my old Mom to read it? Just remove the tag?
I just removed an example of a clade (Archosauria i think it was meant to be) from the intro. I did not remove it because it was a bad example, but because it was not worded to in reference to phylogeny and because I feel the intro is not the place for examples. Examples are a good idea though. Should we dump some of the text on history (which is really more about cladistics, not clades per se) and put in some examples in stead?--Petter Bøckman (talk) 17:32, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing that there has been no new edits for a while, I now remove the "comfusing"-tag.--Petter Bøckman (talk) 10:39, 23 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing article (and some examples?) 

message: The C.E. article would be enhanced by addition of the relevant parts of this article. Alas, I'm not knowledgeable enough to do so. Imagine Reason (talk) 10:32, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It's easy. The way I do it (or did it, once) is as follows: Open a blue edit box for the relevant section of the source article; in this box, highlight the parts you want to copy and copy them; cancel the edit; open an edit box for the relevant section of the target article and paste your selected text where you want it, then, to finish, type a brief description of what you've done in the "Edit Summary", ending with four tildes, select "Show preview" and, if it looks OK, "Save page". Dendropithecus (talk) 04:48, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The edit summary needs to state the source of the copied text for compliance with Wikipedia's author attribution requirements, per Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cambrian Explosion 

message: "The green box is not a clade, but rather represents an evolutionary grade, an incomplete group, because the blue clade descends from it, but is excluded."
Isn't the blue clade ascended from it rather than descended? ScienceApe (talk) 12:42, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand what you're saying – there's ambiguity between "descent" as in Common descent and "descent" as in progress downward.  But it seems to be common to draw evolutionary trees this way, with the oldest taxa at the bottom, like the trunk of a botanical tree.  I've piped a wikilink from "descent" to Common descent which I hope will avoid confusion, but there might be a better solution.  Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 15:14, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote that. English is not my first language, so if it is bugged up, I'm to blame. Feel free to edit it to a correct expression. The intended meaning is along the "hails from" or "have evolved from" lines. Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:53, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's a useful, but rather subtle piece of English usage. "A descends from B" can have two meanings: geometrical, i.e. A goes downwards from B; and kinship, i.e. A is a descendant of B. However, "A is descended from B" always has only the second meaning. So when kinship is meant, it's better to use "is descended from" rather than "descends from". I've edited the article accordingly. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you, and thanks for the English lesson! Petter Bøckman (talk) 09:36, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, yes, good idea. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 05:10, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Diagram description problem? 

message: Bottom line: user interface guidelines strongly recommend that visual displays of information never depend solely upon color to identify or distinguish objects. A significant proportion of the reading audience is colorblind.
I began reading the article with a clear idea of a clade, but after studying the first diagram and caption text found myself thoroughly confused. I am red-green colorblind. The three colored boxes are referred to as red, green and blue, and  there are no additional markers to help distinguish the boxes such as hatching, text labels or similar. Indeed, as I am only partially colorblind I can see colors, but they are often ambiguous and can switch back and forth spending on surrounding colors. In the case of this diagram the central color (I have been informed) is a kind of Kermit green, but it's close proximity to the blue box on the left makes it shift to the pinkish red, which then causes the orange-red box to the right to shft to a kind of chartreuse green.  Consequently, the middle box which was clearly not a clade was RED to my eyes, and the caption asserted that the red box was a clade, and that the GREEN box they claimed was not a clade sure looked like a clade to me, being the box on the far right.
The simplest solution requiring no image editing is to change the caption text to read:
"Cladogram (family tree) of a biological group. The red and blue boxes at right and left represent clades (i.e., complete branches). The green box in the middle is not a clade, but rather represents an evolutionary grade, an incomplete group, because the blue clade at left is descended from it, but is excluded."
Niles.ritter (talk) 14:30, 30 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks and .  Wikipedia guidelines fully support your position (see WP:COLOR), and you're welcome to be bold and make such changes yourself. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 03:16, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I can try to make a version with better contrast. Petter Bøckman (talk) 13:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing Diagram For The Colorblind 

message: I've noticed that when written in a taxobox, the word "clade" is sometimes italicized. What's the reason for this? -- Myrddin_Wyllt 2/11/13
:It's only for emphasis or to mark it as a non-common/foreign word. Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:26, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I assumed it was because the clade itself is unranked. Might that also be a reason? -- Myrddin_Wyllt 2/12/13  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.64.210.28 (talk) 14:23, 12 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clade or ''Clade''? 

message: :"Increasingly, taxonomists try to name preferably or only taxa that are clades. "
I can't tell if there is a missing word here, or is 'preferably' lingo for a form of naming, or is the word 'or' not supposed to be there?
:jg (talk) 01:12, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed it to "Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades."  That's still awkward, but I can't think how to improve it without changing the meaning. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 08:19, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

text: Um, but that actually doesn't mean the same thing. Biologists like Ernst Mayr, who argued against "cladistics", was entirely in favour of classifying organisms based on their evolutionary origins. Stace arguing against strictly monophyletic taxa here is still utterly committed to evolutionary classification. So I've reverted this edit. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:18, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awkward sentence 

message: You could be forgiven for suspecting that one of the reasons the clade has become a popular tool of thinking is because it offers a backdoor way of talking about "race" and common descent without having to use the loaded R-word. The way clade-based reconstruction of an old (and partly hypothetical) family tree works in practice, it makes it difficult to see two or more quite different families of animals emerging from the same progenitor species or genus, but exiting the stem (that progenitor species) with a long time in between them, and then diverging far away from one another over time. Clade-based taxonomy does build on an idea that the last common ancestor and its descendants must all share some defining characteristics, in a combination/matrix which in turn sets them apart from everybody else, and that the taxonomy and taxa described are inherently "there" in nature. 83.254.154.164 (talk) 07:02, 1 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Cladistics shows populations branching rather than progressing through stages. It replaced the idea that each race represents a different stage of human evolution, with "whites" at the top and other, "less advanced" races below. Racism is simplistic but biology is complex, which is why biology is an effective antidote to racism. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 14:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  The upshot of it 

message: I may have gone overboard, but this topic is tricky, and I added more to the lead. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 01:54, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  important topic deserves in-depth explanation 

message: Is it actually a good idea for this section to not only link but to *directly state in the text* to see the Wikispecies page for Anas platyrhynchos for an example? My gut instincts tell me no. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:26, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:31, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikispecies link in "History of nomenclature and taxonomy"