# I Was Wrong on "Monophyletic"

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878>\
**Category:** Peaceful Science\
**Created:** [March 10, 2020, 4:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878 "2020-03-10T16:34:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 11\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 4:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/1 "2020-03-10T16:34:36Z")

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> **[I Was Wrong on “Monophyletic”](https://peacefulscience.org/articles/wrong-on-monophyletic/)**
>
> I was wrong. I incorrectly used the terms monophyletic and polyphyletic in my book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve. I am correcting the record here.

> I was wrong. I incorrectly used the terms “monophyletic” and “polyphyletic” in my book, _The Genealogical Adam and Eve_. I am correcting the record here.

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**Author:** ![Argon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/argon/32/3896_2.png) [@Argon](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Argon)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 6:24pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/2 "2020-03-10T18:24:05Z")

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Well, at least you didn’t swap “polytheistic” with “monotheistic”…

That wouldn’t have gone over well with your target audience.

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 7:28pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/3 "2020-03-10T19:28:13Z")

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 8:19pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/4 "2020-03-10T20:19:03Z")

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I’d don’t swap monophyletic and polyphyletic either 🙂 . I just used them wrong.

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**Author:** ![Joe\_Felsenstein](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/joe_felsenstein/32/8176_2.png) [@Joe\_Felsenstein](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Joe_Felsenstein)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 10:36pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/5 "2020-03-10T22:36:36Z")

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This is the first time I’ve ever heard the terms “monophylogeny” and “paraphylogeny”. I have heard “monophyletic” and “paraphyletic”, and “monophyly” and “paraphyly”. But I haven’t heard those first two, nor their presumed derivatives “monophylogenetic” and “paraphylogenetic”. New to me.

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 10, 2020, 10:51pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/6 "2020-03-10T22:51:45Z")

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Monophylogeny and Polyphylogeny are used by Alan Templeton to distinguish theories of multiple biological race from those with a single race.

I made the mistake of throwing in the -phyletic terms. I was wrong there.

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**Author:** ![Joe\_Felsenstein](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/joe_felsenstein/32/8176_2.png) [@Joe\_Felsenstein](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Joe_Felsenstein)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 4:37am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/7 "2020-03-11T04:37:25Z")

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Is your usage (and Templeton’s?) related to the old term “polygenic”, and “polygeny” which referred once upon a time to arguments that different human populations or races arose separately? (Of course “polygenic” is also used in an unrelated sense in quantitative genetics, where polygenic simply means that the variation in the trait are caused by variation at multiple loci. And in the 1940s some thought that these were special sorts of genes which could be called “polygenes”. This had nothing to do with the issue of separate origins for different populations.)

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 11, 2020, 11:36pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/8 "2020-03-11T23:36:53Z")

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@Joe_Felsenstein I’m not sure the origin of the word and don’t want to multiply any errors here, but what you write sounds reasonable. The value of those terms is that they are not common in the scientific literature now, so I have some more autonomy in using them. As I’ve said, I believe I am using them consistent with Alan Templeton in his work arguing against biological race among humans alive today.

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**Author:** ![Joe\_Felsenstein](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/joe_felsenstein/32/8176_2.png) [@Joe\_Felsenstein](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Joe_Felsenstein)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2020, 12:11am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/9 "2020-03-12T00:11:01Z")

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Anyway, they’re Alan’s idiosyncratic usages and are not intended to address whether groups of species are monophyletic.

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**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2020, 2:01am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/10 "2020-03-12T02:01:04Z")

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Exactly, which is why I issued the correction. My use in the book of the -phyletic terms was wrong.

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**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [March 12, 2020, 2:27pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/i-was-wrong-on-monophyletic/9878/11 "2020-03-12T14:27:27Z")

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Given the ambiguity of the term “biological type”, there seems no way to rescue a meaningful usage of “monophylogeny” or “polyphylogeny”.