COMMENTS ON COMPONENT‐COMPATIBILITY IN HISTORICAL BIOGEOGRAPHY

This paper is a commentary on Zandee and Roos’ (1987; see also Humphries et al., 1988) recent attempt to develop quantitative methods of analysis for cladistic biogeography. Although I share their desire for an explicit methodology (Page, 1988), I believe that their contribution is marred by a number of rrrors and misunderstandings. Three items in particular drserve comment. First, Zaridee and Roos misunderstood the rationale for Nelson and Platnick’s ( 1981) Assumption 2 because they confused taxonomic with biogeographic relationship. Assumption 2 is a means of avoiding confounding geographic proximity with cladistic relationship. I shall argue that the appropriateness of the three different interpretations ofwidespread taxa (Assumptions 0, 1 and 2) depends on the cladistic relationships ofthe widespread taxon, and on the spatial arrangement of the areas of endemism. Second, although Zandee and Roos’ intention was to implement Nelson and Platnick’s Assumptions 1 and 2, they omitted Nelson and Platnick’s procedures for handling redundant distributions. That part of Assumptions 1 and 2 that they did choose to implement they did so incorrectly. Finally, I show how Platnick (1981) and Nelson and Platnick ( 198 1) constructed general area cladograms from individual cladograms. My commentary does not cover all the issues raised by Zandee and Roos’ paper; readers desiring a more general discussion of area cladogram construction and comparison are referred to Page ( 1988).

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