Search Results

It was not a foregone conclusion that systematics should be phylogenetic. Several commentators on both sides of the Atlantic pointed to logistical, epistemic, and ontological reasons why a phylogenetic basis for classification was theoretically abhorrent or practically impossible. Willi Hennig, in facing these objections, offered a reading of clades as individuals in a way that solves several problems at once. As elegant as it is, this solution leads directly to difficulties with finding a theoretical basis for taxonomic ranking.

Homology, a central concept in comparative biology, has been variously understood over the last century. This chapter tracks several versions of homology over time and through the lens of the historical/mechanistic distinction one finds in Hans Spemann’s work in the early twentieth century. These various interpretations of homology are seen to converge again in the case of developmental evolution, where the differences between them, which have come from the rise of evolutionary biology in general and phylogenetic systematics in particular, again become both salient and informative.

Willi Hennig, a shy and modest entomologist, is regarded to have caused a “revolution” in systematics. A condensed description of his life and career provide the background of an evaluation of his contribution to the development of biological systematics. His main emphasis lay on a strict concept of “relationship,” as founded on genealogy, in contrast to similarity, and on a clear terminology and an explicit substantiation of hypotheses on phylogenetic relationships. He was not a revolutionary person but provided the foundation of modern cladistics, which fundamentally changed the methodology of systematics.

The New Systematics, the New Taxonomy, and the Future of Biodiversity Studies This chapter places the future practice of taxonomy in its historical and conceptual context, asking what kinds of technological investments make sense given taxonomy’s theoretical structure and the need for accelerating taxonomic studies. We defend the view that the theoretical and epistemological foundations of taxonomy point toward, rather than away from, the continued development of a new cyberinfrastructure that importantly includes morphology, even as molecular techniques become more common and more sophisticated. While we are excited and enthusiastic about developments in molecular systematics, we think comparative morphology should retain a central place in our collective attempt to understand life more fully. This is not just because of the pride of place morphology has in the history of natural history but because of what we understand the foundational ideas of contemporary taxonomy to require.