Ludvig, you're wrong. I won't flame-on, but molecular systematics is one
piece of the puzzle for creating phylogenies. It may give ambiguous or
wrong data/results some of the time, but trying to ascertain derived
traits via morphometrics could give one ambiguous results, too.
You're fear that a researcher could make sweeping claims based on what is
a trivial nucleotide change has merit. But that's what peer review is for,
and even so, that's not always going to be absolute truth.
Henning was concerned with derived characteristics. I would make the
assertion that these characteristics can be demonstrated to exist on the
molecular level..
--Bruce Stallsmith
University of Massachusetts/Boston, Biology Dept.
stallsmith at umbsky.cc.umb.edu
