Can you address the metaphor of phylogenist as map maker?
I would say that studying phylogeny is a lot like map making was when you could only see very small pieces of the whole picture at any one time. And of course we’ll never get to the point where we can have a time machine that’s like a satellite giving us the whole picture like a map maker has gotten today. But it’s very much like working and making maps in the early days. Phylogenetics is a necessary part of biology; are evolution and biology becoming one? Theodosius Dobzhansky is famous for the claim that nothing in biology makes sense without evolution, and by that he means evolution in the geological sense, evolution through time-he means phylogeny. And it’s true that to organize the information in biology, which is overwhelming I mean, if you have any idea how many organisms are living and how complicated they are, a person is easily overwhelmed. Without some way to organize that, to simplify it, to be able to talk about groups of animals in a meaningful way, it’s overwhelming, and
