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What, Exactly, is Cladistics? Re-writing the History of Systematics and Biogeography

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Abstract

The development of comparative biology (systematics) has been of interest to philosophers and historians. Particular attention has been placed on the ‘war’ of the 1970s and 1980s, the apparent dispute among those who preferred this or that methodology. In this contribution we examine the history of comparative biology from the perspective of fundamentals rather than methodologies. Our examination is framed within the artificial—natural classification dichotomy, a viewpoint currently lost from view but worth resurrecting.

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Notes

  1. Interestingly, Haeckel used the word cladus as a category of classification (Haeckel 1868, p. 350: “Diese achtzehn Classen des Pflanzenreichs aber gruppiren sich naturgemass…, dass wir im Ganzen sechs Hauptclassen (oder Kladen, d.h. Aeste) des Pflanzenreichs unterschieden konnen”; see charts on p. 352 and p. 393), becoming cladome (cladoms) in the 8th edition of Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Haeckel 1889a, p. 457: “Diese achtzehn Classen des Pflanzenreichs aber gruppiren sich naturgemass…, dass wir im Ganzen sech Haupt-Classen oder Cladome (d.h. Aeste) des Pflanzenreichs unterschieden konnen”. In the 1st English translation (The History of Creation, translated by E. Ray Lankester), Haeckel noted that: “However, these eighteen classes of the vegetable kingdom can again be naturally grouped in such a manner that we are able to distinguish in all six main divisions or branches of the vegetable kingdom” (Haeckel 1876, II, p. 79). The divisions were named “Branches or Clades of the Vegetable Kingdom” (Haeckel 1876, II, on the chart on p. 82) and “Main Classes, Branches or Clades of the Animal Kingdom” (Haeckel 1876, II, on the chart on p. 132). In the text “Main Classes”, “Branches” and “Provinces” are also used interchangeably. By the 4th English edition the word Cladome was adopted (for example, Haeckel 1889b, p. 196, “…the tribe of Helminthes may be subdivided into four cladomes, or main classes…”). Haeckel provided an account of the systematic categories he used in 1866 (Haeckel 1866), reproduced in an almost identical form in 1894 (Haeckel 1894, p. 29: “Wenn wir in diesem Sinne die gebräuchlichen Gruppenstufen orden und dabei der angenommenen Praxis des besten systematischen Autoritäten folgen, so ergiebt sich folgende Stufenleiter der subordinirten Kategorien” (If we follow in this sense the common group levels and the accepted practice of best systematic authorities, then the following scheme of subordinated categories are required…, our translation). Haeckel lists 24 categories in a Table, “Kategorie das Systems”, the first seven being Phylum, Subphylum, Cladoma, Subcladus, Classis, Subclassis, and Legio. Thus, like the French evolutionary biologist Lucien Cuenot, who used clade as a synonym for phylum (Cuenot 1940, p. 24, see Tassy and Barriel 1995), Haeckel used the word clade only as a category in classification, a point Cavalier-Smith (1998, p. 210) misunderstood.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks to Ian Kitching for comment and Gareth Nelson for comment and encouraging us to look at Haeckel’s use of the term cladom and revisit the works of de Candolle.

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  1. Department of Botany, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    D. M. Williams

  2. International Institute for Species Exploration and School of Life Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, PO Box 874501, Tempe, AZ, 85287-4501, USA

    M. C. Ebach

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Williams, D.M., Ebach, M.C. What, Exactly, is Cladistics? Re-writing the History of Systematics and Biogeography. Acta Biotheor 57, 249–268 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-008-9058-5

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