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The Science of Phylogenetic Systematics: Explanation, Prediction, and Test
Author(s) -
Kluge Arnold G.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
cladistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.323
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1096-0031
pISSN - 0748-3007
DOI - 10.1111/j.1096-0031.1999.tb00279.x
Subject(s) - cladogram , synapomorphy , homology (biology) , biology , phylogenetic tree , evolutionary biology , inference , universality (dynamical systems) , cladistics , operationalization , epistemology , genetics , philosophy , clade , physics , quantum mechanics , gene
When the concept of homology is operationalized with synapomorphy and tested with character congruence, homology and homoplasy are treated as a complement relation, a and not‐ a , respectively. This leaves homoplasy to be defined nominally, something like operational ‘error’ in the inference of homology. In choosing the most severely tested and least disconfirmed cladogram, those errors are minimized, and the power of that cladogram to explain synapomorphies, as inherited from the same common ancestral condition, is correspondingly maximized. Tests of predictions of homoplasy can lead to the elimination of those kinds of error. The complementary relationship between homology and homoplasy is considered one of reciprocal clarification, not epistemological dependence.