In article <D7DDBp.Jq1 at zoo.toronto.edu>,
Mark Siddall <mes at zoo.toronto.edu> wrote:
>>I often wish Zuckerlandl and Pauling never wrote that paper.
>There is no clock. Independent lineages (post cladogenesis) are just that
>independent.
No, I doubt they are _that_ independent. Do you mean to claim that the
biology of (say) two sibling species of sparrow are sufficiently
different (their mutational repair systems, for example) that they evolve
at _totally_ independent rates? That in the triple (song sparrow,
chipping sparrow, oak tree) that the first two are not more similar in
rate of molecular evolution? I suspect that clocks are useful, if not
perfect, any time you get down near the species level.
-----
Joe Felsenstein joe at genetics.washington.edu (IP No. 128.95.12.41)
Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Box 357360, Seattle, WA 98195-7360
