#Phylogeny

[ailurinae]

It's a megapode, not related to true turkeys at all (other than being in the "game bird"/"land fowl" order Galliformes)

Megapodes build huge mounds to incubate their eggs instead of sitting on them. Some (many? all? I am not sure) species constantly probe the temperature of the nest with their beak and remove or add covering to adjust the temperature.

Turkeys, namely the wild turkey, the domestic turkey and the ocellated turkey, are genus Meleagris. They are in the pheasant group, which includes pheasants, peafowl, grouse, and chickens. And they are basically on the far other end of the Galliform family tree from megapodes (that is, Phasianidae diverged from other lineages relatively recently, while Megapodiidae is the earliest diverging extant family)

Gobble, gobble? Here’s a turkey you might not be familiar with: the Australian Brush-turkey (Alectura lathami)! Found in parts of eastern Australia, this ground-dwelling omnivore feeds on insects, fallen fruits, and seeds. This species' chicks become independent almost immediately after birth. Parents leave their offspring to fend for themselves, and hatchlings are able to fly within hours of being born. Nearly hunted to extinction in the 1930s, this species’ population has since rebounded.

Photo: JJ Harrison, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

[bunjywunjy]

Have you heard about the Dog x Fox hybrid they found in Brazil?

it's actually a really interesting case of hybridization!

the animal in question has been genetically tested and confirmed to be a hybrid between a dog and a pampas fox, but the caveat there is that pampas foxes are actually in a new-world genus called Lycalopex, sometimes known as the False Foxes!

these animals are actually quite a bit closer to dogs than true foxes (everything in the genus Vulpes) are, genetically speaking, so it's not too hard to imagine that it COULD happen, but it's still pretty bonkers that it did!

here's the miscreant in question.

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lyndon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

[hutiapendra]

Phylogenetic tree of the Cenobites

[thagomizersshow]

Apes are a kind of monkey, and that's ok

This is a pet peeve of mine in sci comm ESPECIALLY because many well respected scientific institutions are insistent about apes and monkeys being separate things, despite how it's been established for nearly a century that apes are just a specific kind of monkey.

Nearly every zoo I've visited that houses apes has a sign somewhere like the one below that explains the supposed distinction between the two groups, focusing on anatomy instead of phylogeny.

(Every time I see a graphic like this I age ten years) Movies even do this, especially when they want to sound credible. Take this scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes:

This guy Franklin is presented as the authority on apes in this scene, and he treats James Franco calling a chimpanzee a monkey like it's insulting.

But when you actually look at a primate family tree, you can see that apes are on the same branch as Old World monkeys, while New World monkeys branched off much earlier.

(I'm assuming bushbabies are included as "lorises" here?)

To put it simply, that means you and I are more closely related to a baboon than a baboon is to a capuchin.

Either the definition of monkey includes apes OR we can keep using an anatomical definition and Barbary macaques get to be an ape because they're tailless.

"I've got no tails on me!"

SO

Why did all this happen? Why did we start insisting apes are monkeys, especially considering the two words were pretty much interchangeable for centuries? Well I've got one word for ya...

This the attitude that puts humans on a pedestal over other life on Earth. That there are intrinsically important features of humanity, and other living things are simply stepping stones in that direction.

At the dawn of evolutionary study, anthropocentrism was enforced by using a model called evolutionary grades. And boy howdy do I hate evolutionary grades.

Basically, a grade is a way of defining a group of animals by using anatomical "complexity". It's the idea that evolution has milestones of importance that, once reached, makes an organism into a new kind of thing. You can almost think of it like evolutionary levels. An animal "levels up" once it gains a certain trait deemed "complex".

You can probably see the issue here; that complexity is an ephemeral idea defined through subjectivity, rather than based off anything truly observable. What makes walking on 2 legs more complex than walking on four? How are tails less complex than no tails? "Complexity" in this context is unmeasurable, therefore it is unscientific. That's why evolutionary grades suck and I never want to look at one.

For primates, this meant once some of them lost their tails, grew bigger brains, and started brachiating instead of leaping, they simply "leveled up" and became apes. Despite the early recognition that apes were simply a branch of the Old World monkey family tree (1785!), the idea of grades took precedent over the phylogenetic link.

In the early years of primatology, humans were even seen as a grade "above" apes, related but separated by our upright stance and supposed far greater intelligence (this was before other apes were recognized tool users).

It wasn't until the goddamn 1970s that it was recognized all great apes should be included in the clade Hominidae alongside humanity. This was a major shift in thinking, and required not just science, but the public, to recognize just how close we are to other living species. It seems like this change has, thankfully, happened and most institutions and science respecting folks have accepted this fact. Those who don't accept it tend to have a lot more issues with science than only accepting humans as apes.

And now, we come to the current problem. Why is there a persistent idea that monkeys and apes are separate?

I want to make it clear I don't believe there was a conscious movement at play here. I think there's a lot of things going on, but there isn't some anti-monkey lobby that is hiding the truth. I think the problem is more complicated and deals with how human brains and human culture often struggle to do too many changes at once.

Now, I haven't seen any studies on this topic, so everything I say going forward is based on my own experience of how people react to learning apes (and therefore, humans) are monkeys.

First off, there is a lot of mental rearranging you have to do to accept humans as monkeys. First you, gotta accept humans as apes, then you have to stop thinking in grades and look at the family tree. Then you have to accept that apes are on the Old World monkey branch, separate from the New World monkeys.

That's a lot of steps, and I've seen science-minded zoo educators struggle with that much mental rearranging. And even while they accept this to an extent, they often find it even harder to communicate these ideas to the public.

I think this is a big reason why zoos and museums often push this idea the hardest. Convincing the public humans are apes is already a challenge, teaching them that all apes are monkeys at the same time might seem impossible.

I believe the other big reason people cling to the "apes-aren't-monkeys" idea is that it still allows for that extra bit of comforting anthropocentrism. Think of it this way; anthropocentrism puts humans on a pedestal. When you learn that humans are apes, you can either remove the pedestal and place humans with other animals, OR, you can place the apes up on the pedestal with humanity. For those that have an anthropocentric worldview, it can actually be easier to "uplift" the apes than ditch the pedestal.

Too make things worse, monkeys are such a symbol of a "primitive" animal nature that many can't accept raising them to the "level" of humanity, but removing the pedestal altogether is equally painful. So they hold tight to an outdated idea despite all the evidence. This is why there's often offense taken when an ape is called a monkey. It's tantamount to someone calling you a monkey, and that's too much of a challenge to anthropocentrism.

Personally, I think recognizing myself as a monkey is wonderful. Non-ape monkeys are as "complex" as any ape. They make tools, they have dynamic social groups, they're adapted to a wide range of environments, AND they have the best hair of all primates.

I think we should be honored to be considered one of them.

[softersynths]

the tama tree of life

[albertonykus]

Wrens, nuthatches, and treecreepers are members of Certhioidea, a group of generally small but highly charismatic birds. One of my favorite songbird clades.

[crevicedwelling]

MANTISES ARE RELATED TO ROACHES??

yes! while they do have differing ecologies—mantises generally are elongate, diurnal predators and cockroaches generally are flattened, nocturnal detritivores—it’s not so surprising if you take a closer look:

they are one another’s closest relatives, being grouped together in the superorder Dictyoptera, which is revealed by their many shared anatomical features.

if you compare the wing structure on these two, you’ll find the veins are very similar. to get a mantis out of a roach, morphologically speaking, all you’ve got to do is elongate the pronotum (roach head shield, mantis ‘torso’), elongate the legs, and enlarge the eyes.

mantises and roaches also both produce “oothecae,” tough eggcases in which eggs are protected from the environment. mantis ooths are often made of sturdy, hard foam, while roach ooths are leathery and purse-like.

the raptorial legs of mantises aren’t too greatly modified from a roach forelimb, either. roaches already have spiny legs for digging and defense; with additional spines organized in rows, there’s a powerful grasping foreleg.

additionally, some of the most basal (least changed from the original ancestor) mantises retain a number of very roach-like features, such as flat bodies, a short pronotum, and long cerci (“butt antennae”). Chaeteessa doesn’t even have the long spike at the end of the tibia segment! although I’m not entirely sure if all of these roachy structures are necessary primitive and not secondarily derived, these two do give a good look at how mantises might’ve looked before they evolved the characteristic spindly green forms you recognize today.

[markscherz]

Bird-reptiles is a butterfly-moth situation?

Precisely! These kinds of situations show us how wrong we have been for so long about the relationships among various animals. The pretty little boxes we like to make are often very, very wrong, phylogenetically, i.e., they are not compatible with the *actual* relationships among the organisms.

Here are a few other mind-fucks that have come to light as a result of modern methods being applied to traditional categories that turned out to be wrong:

• Snakes are lizards

• Termites are cockroaches

• Birds belong to lizard-hipped dinosaurs (Saurischia), not the bird-hipped ones (Ornithischia)

• All tetrapods are fish

• Insects are crustaceans

[monikatouhou]

Tried to put together a decently parsimonious phylogeny

[mindrat]

the phylogeny of bread clips

[bunjywunjy]

Hey so what’s with so many people insisting that marsupials are not mammals? Like they’re not placental mammals but they are still very much mammalian. I’ve encountered several people trying to argue that marsupials are just marsupials and not mammals.

Marsupials are mammals, guys. They have mammarian glands which produce milk to feed their young. They are mammals. Why is that so confusing? What class would they belong to if not mammal?

WHO is saying this?? do they think that platypuses and echidnas aren't mammals either??

mammals come in three basic flavors- monotremes, marsupials, and placental/eutherian mammals. all of these animals are full-on mammals, just moving from more basal to more "modern" types.

they can be further split into two groups, prototherian and therian! prototherian includes the monotremes and some groups that have long been extinct, while therian mammals encompass both the marsupials and placentals/eutherians.

mammals are an ancient lineage that share roots with the reptile group, it makes sense that there are multiple different lineages still around! I'm glad to be sharing a planet with those weirdos today.

[iamthekaijuking]

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

So we don't know, exactly, how most birds are related to each other

so, for fun:

more polls that can't get derailed

had to cut the et al for space, sorry

enjoy

[thagomizersshow]

Thinking about bovid phylogeny and how this guy (four horned antelope)

is more closely related to this guy (gaur)

than he is to this guy (Damara dik-dik)