Bridges Between Evolutionary Pattern and Process

De Pinna and Sallcs ask for c1:trificatioii on how cladistit analysis tcsts ;tdapt;itiorial hypotheses (de Pinna and Salles, 1990;Coddington, 1988).They also point out that mi alternative optimization exists for character 3 in my (1988) fig. 2. Yup, OK, 1'11 admit it..1readers of the previous paper are hereby instructed to bclicvc that a new taxon h;rs lieen disco, identical to taxon D excepl for some convincing autapomorphies which iiwd not concerri us.Based on this new irif'ormatiori, the prc\.iously reported optitnization wins b y onc (arid only-one) step.Hey, close don't count in cliidistics!the allegedly important distinction bctwecn "states of' becoming" and "states of being".Il'somcthing already is, I would guess it proljably became in order t o be, arid i f i t is only l)ecomiiig, it had to t)ec:omr from somewhere, and probably to somewhere a s ~. c l l , not to mention bc while it is becoming.I a m not sure whether I view adaptation as becoming rather than heing or whether the distinction makes a difference.Most ofdc Pinna and Salles's remaining :rrgumciits tend to the same point: however desiralde, no amount of mapping characters on cladograms has yet provided an "cmpirical bridge", "bridge concept", "empirical link", or even "true and empirical relations" to processes such a s natural selection or process theories such as adaptation.