Taxic and Transformational Homology: Different Ways of Seeing

Abstract

Hypotheses of taxic homology are hypotheses of taxa (groups). Hypotheses of transformational homology are hypotheses of transformations between character states within the context of an explicit model of character evolution. Taxic and transformational homology are discussed with respect to secondary loss and reversal in the context of three-taxon statement analysis and standard cladistic analysis. We argue that it is important to distinguish complement relation homologies from those that we term paired homologues. This distinction means that the implementation of three-taxon statement analysis needs modification if all data are to be considered potentially informative. Modified three-taxon statement analysis and standard cladistic analysis yield different results for the example of character reversal provided by Kluge (1994) for both complement relation data and paired homologues. We argue that these different results reflect the different approaches of standard cladistic analysis and modified t.t.s. analysis. In the standard cladistic approach, absence, as secondary loss, can provide evidence for a group. This is because the standard cladistic approach implements a transformational view of homology. In the t.t.s approach discussed in this paper, absence can only be interpreted as secondary loss by congruence with other data; absence alone can never provide evidence for a group. In this respect, the modified t.t.s. approach is compatible with a taxic view of homology.