Thank you CKing for your most enlightening response. As usual your point of view is laced with the kind of juicy references that I look forward to reading. Without dismissing its objective truths, I still see molecular systematics as running the risk of becoming one almightly card-house skyscraper unless the kind of rigor that you have repeatedly proposed is implimented. It seems to me that sooner or later the whole construct will just tumble down in a confusing miasma of misinterpretation. Its collapse is probably already underway by the way mtDNA data has been used, but a few good kicks at the bottoms cards might not go astray. I would love to lay the boot in, but generally I tend not to pick fights with gangs of thugs or with those bigger than me. If they pick on me...well, that's another matter...

Richard Wells