Wolfgang claims that Eurasian species of Elaphe are as morphologically disparate from each other as N. American Elaphe is from Lampropeltis and Pituophis. If that is the case, then systematists should justify their splitting of Elaphe on morphological grounds. Unfortunately, Wolfgang no longer wishes to elaborate on this claim and he has retreated to the position that morphology should not be taken into consideration in classification. And he also claims that those systematists who take morphological disparity into account in their classifications are either dead or past their prime. That is nonsense indeed.



I submit that Einstein and Darwin are both dead. Yet their theories are very much alive. Scientific theories and valid ideas are independent of the life span of their proponents. Besides, Willi Hennig is also dead. So, what makes Hennig's taxonomic philosophy any better than those of Darwin's? I submit that Darwin and Mayr know a whole lot more about evolution than Hennig, who has to retreat from his assumption that a species becomes extinct when two, and only two, new daughter species evolve. Since peripatric speciation is the most common form of speciation, an old species can continue to exist when one or more species arise from peripheral populations. Hennig's classification can only work if his assumption about speciation is correct. Since Hennig is incorrect, his classification does not work. Ideas that do not work may be popular for a short time, but eventually Hennigian classifications will suffer the same fate as Lamarckism.



Enough digression. Although Wolfgang claims that Utiger et al.'s classification is based on "phylogeny" or actually branching order without regard to morphological disparity, Utiger et al.'s inability to resolve branching order makes their classification invalid according to Wolfgang's own definition of "phylogeny." If branching order is the only component of "phylogeny" then Utiger et al. has no phylogeny. They therefore have no classification based on phylogeny. They do have a classification based on ideology. I submit that Wolfgang is championing Utiger et al.'s classification because of ideology, not phylogeny.

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