Fifty shades of cladism

Hierarchies, classifications, cladograms and phylogeny

“…Williams (1992, p. 151) concluded, “Anti‐theoretical, anti‐philosophical taxonomy will tend to replace cladism for one simple reason: once the philosophy of cladism is rejected, the philosophical confusion in cladism is eliminated. All the problems go away.” That, of course, depends upon what “the philosophy of cladism” is (for recent commentary, see Brower 2016b, 2018, 2019). To state Williams's conclusion another way, once the theory and philosophy of cladistics are correctly described and understood, all of the problems go away.…”

Orders Haplopoda and Onychopoda (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Cladocera) do not form a monophyletic group: morphological evidence

“…Mayr [1969Mayr [ , 1974Mayr [ , 1982; Rasnitsyn [1996Rasnitsyn [ , 2002), which are believed to treat phylogenetic and taxonomic problems more adequately. In this regard, it is important to point out the insufficiency of the methodology of cladistic analysis (e.g., Mayr [1974]; Ashlock [1979]; Stuessy [1997]; Brower [2018]), in which it is customary to use a small number of arbitrarily selected traits (see e.g., Olesen [1998Olesen [ , 2009; Negrea et al [1999]; Richter et al [2007]) that seem "synapomorphic" but, contrary, can often be sign of homoplasy of the taxa being compared.…”