Kitzmiller, the Universe, and Everything

[Joe_Felsenstein]

I just wanted to comment on the argument that is alleged to show that there has been a jump in FI in evolution from fishes to humans. Can’t you just flip branches left-to-right at one fork on the phylogeny, so that the sarcopterygians, including the tetrapods, are on the left and the actinopterygians, including the teleosts, are on the right? It’s still the same evolutionary tree. But now measure how similar the sequences of each group are to a fish sequence, say one in a minnow. We will find that “FI” measured that way will be low in starfish, tunicates, lampreys, lungfish, amphibians, lizards, birds, and mammals. But it will jump up in the teleosts, with tuna, salmon, etc showing high “FI” when FI is measured that way. Do we need some special explanation for that jump?