Patrick Alexander wrote:

"he appears to be a troll with a lot of time on his hands and a

strong dislike of molecular phylogenetics and modern herpetology."



Me:

Patrick's claim that I am a "troll" and that I dislike molecular phylogenetics and modern herpetology is so ridiculous that it is actually hilarious. Some of Patrick's responses to my posts in this forum were deleted by the moderator probably because they violated the policy of this forum, since these posts contained asinine remarks and obscenities but no facts or reasoned arguments. He certainly has a lot of chutzpah.



As for the claim that I dislike molecular systematics, that is simply Patrick making yet another unsupported statement. I have not confined my criticism to molecular studies. I have criticized the morphological studies of Kluge and that of Frost and Etheridge, among others. In fact, I used the molecular data from Lopez and Maxson (1995) to show that Old World and New World Elaphe form a monophyletic group and I used the immunological data of Dowling et al. to show that Lampropeltis calligaster is a close relative of Lampropeltis mexicana. In this thread, I have cited Maxson and Wilson's immunological data, which is molecular evidence, to show that it is not a good idea to put Hyla regilla in Pseudacris. I am far from an opponent of "molecular phylogenetics."



Finally, as for the claim that I dislike "modern herpetology." There is indeed a kernel of truth in that statement. Many "modern" herpetologists have straightjacketed themselves with cladistic dogma. As a result, many "modern" systematists are on a rampage to destroy paraphyletic reptilian and amphibian taxa, since cladists (or Hennigians) find such taxa ideologically unacceptable. The cladists' ideological intolerance of paraphyletic taxa and their embrace of such invalid species concepts as the evolutionary species concept and phylogenetic species concept have resulted in a large number of unnecessary taxonomic changes/proposals. The recent transfer of Hyla crucifer, Hyla regilla and Hyla cadaverina to the genus Pseudacris is a very good example. Hedges, who was adhering to cladistic dogma, made the transfer, even though subsequent studies showed that his tree was incorrect and therefore his taxonomic proposal was unnecessary even according to cladistic dogma. If he wasn't adhering to cladistic dogma, his taxonomic proposal would have been unnecessary, saving us all from the taxonomic chaos his proposal has generated. "Modern herpetology" has therefore taken a turn for the worse because of the popularity of cladistic ideology amongst some of its practitioners. Fortunately, there are still many herpetologists who have not succumbed to cladistic dogma. Hence the future of the discipline of herpetology is not entirely hopeless.



Equally fortunately, perhaps, is the fact that Patrick is primarily interested in plants, not reptiles and amphibians. Herpetology's "loss" will be botany's "gain."

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