Showing papers by "University of Oviedo published in 1966"

Masterometry and evolution, again.

Abstract: Our friend and colleague, G. G. Simpson, in a recent number of this journal (Simpson, 1965) has done us the honor of commenting on our work concerning some original biometric methods that we call masterometry. This was done especially to express an opinion on the implications of these methods for the mechanism of evolution. In his analysis Simpson concludes that these masterometric methods do not argue in favor of any one of the current theories but that they do not in any way tend to contradict the synthetic theory of evolution or "Neo-Darwinism." We wish to set forth in the present note a number of considerations that we consider fundamental with respect to the critique cited above and to our position in this matter. Other authors, in addition to Lehman (1962-cited by Simpson, 1965), including Heuts (1960) and Blanc (1958), have expressed themselves as agreeing that our methodology provides evidence in favor of typogenesis and orthogenesis. Although we consider that the authoritative critique by Simpson, like all his work, merits serious consideration, we think that in this particular case it fails to take into account questions inherent in this method and its results, which may be considered basic for our conclusions. Whatever criticism may be made of our methods, we believe that it should not leave out of account the following important facts. First of all, choice was made, before knowing our own results, of the type that could be considered basal for the whole group of fissiped carnivores, following Julian Huxley (1953) who stated: "The order Carnivora among the mammals is the result of the deployment of one original tiny flesh-eating creature into lions, tigers, bears, seals, pandas, mongooses, and many other specialized types." The original type is represented by Cynodictis, an average, basal, central carnivore without specialization, of which it could be said (and has been said) that it represents the first breakthrough to the fissiped type from the miacids, considered as ideal transitional forms between creodonts and fissipeds. In the second place, significant characters of carnivore dental anatomy were chosen and, furthermore, these were simple characters, in order that the methods should not present special difficulties in their application. At the same time characters were chosen such as to have a bipolar distribution (or trends in two opposite directions) in the course of the evolution of the group. (Let us say in passing that Simpson claims that this bipolarity is not frequently found in evolution and takes as an example the case of the equids; however, in our opinion this bipolarity probably can be encountered in neoungulates, for example, in which opposite trends do exist.) And, lastly, one of the most fundamental facts in the application of the methods followed was that, both in the values of a and /3 (the first method), and in those of P, C, and T (the second method), the regression line obtained for the sum total of the forms considered (treated as if they were a population), picked out at random, passed through the point representing the values for Cynodictis. And this fact, verified more than twice (since the correlation between a and /3 was carried out three times with an increasing number of forms) I Translated from Spanish by G. G. Simpson. The authors have checked and approved the English version and are solely responsible for its contents.