I finally received my copy of FoS. Now we can argue about trivial
meaningless rainbowfish crap! :-) At least it will be better than Flex
and Marlin crapping on about nothing. :-) You're both in so many MuDs
that you're becoming McFuRrIeD. And then we have Rootser's interlectually
unstimulating additions. And then there is Hansen too (who is at least
occasionally funny), but alas, I digress from the real topic of my
post..... :-)
> It is the classification Gunter proposes for the rainbowfish. I
> strongly disagree with it in nearly all points.
I look at this in a different way to Harro. I really like the conceptual
level of Gunther's article. His classification is very loose in as much
as each group is not at an equal phylogenetic level which is fine, but it
has some potential implications for how we may choose to think about the
relationships of rainbows. Gunther sets out a number of nice hypotheses
that are testable and there are predictions that one can make to further
test them. And anyway, it wouldn't be you Harro if you didn't disagree
strongly with everything! :-) How old is the genus Melanotaenia Harro?
:-) (please don't answer that one!).
> Of course I see the groups he mentions, but I find that there are more
> groups, at least for the NG species,
> and that in nearly all other groups the species are arranged incorrectly.
> To give one example: Of course there is a maccullochi group, however,
> I think that M. sexlineata and also
> M. papuae belong into this group, while pygmaea to my opinion does not
> belong to the nigrans group but to > the australis group.
So, what are your groups Harro using which characters? It would be
interesting if more people took the effort that Gunther did. All it can
do is stimulate more work from a broader base. A lot of different
classification schemes could be used, it just depends upon which
characters one chooses.
In terms of the maccullochi group, he does not imply that maccs and
sexlineata-papuea are not closely related. Just that maccs have some
characterstics that set them apart from the rest. I'm sure one could go
on and split the goldei group up into all kinds of things. Using the
characters that he uses gives those groups.
I found his splendida and australis groups to be most interesting. This
split is also broadly supported by phylogeny based upon DNA work. I
suspect that this will be one of the greater ideas Gunthers paper provides.
I think his split based upon flashing band presence is interesting. I
don't believe it is as important as he makes it but that is yet to be
tested. I would guess that this is probably a single gene character
since it is either there or not. Wouldn't it be interesting to cross a
non flasher with a flasher and breed them a couple of generations and see
what happens? That should give some idea of the genetic basis for the
trait. It could well be that a mutation occurred in one lineage that
lead to all the non flashers (or visa versa depending upon which is the
the ancestral state, although it would seem having the flash is
ancestral). On the other hand, it may be that this mutation
has occurred in several different lineages. Either way, this is still
not neccessarily incompatable with his classification since he does not
give what he thinks the relationships are between his groups. The same
goes for fin profile relative to body profile and pointiness. I have
collected inornatas from adjoining rivers around Mt Isa with quite
different fin widths/profiles, and also in splendidas around Mackay. I
can see the point he is trying to make with fin shape/width. I think
though that intermediates will cloud that resolution.
All in all I think it provides an interesting alternative way of thinking
about rainbowfishes and how they relate to one another phylogenetically.
The key thing to remember is not whether it is right or wrong, but how
much this stimulates research and thinking on this interesting problem.
BTW, the photo accompanying the dwarf flathead gudgeon article is not a
dwarf, it is a normal flathead (Philypnodon grandiceps). :-) Oh well.
Tootles
Peter Unmack
Confusius says "put Rooster in freezer to get hard cock"
:-)