Before beginning a detailed evaluation of the three major approaches

to biological classifi cation (i.e., phyletics, phenetics, and cladistics), it

is useful to set the stage by outlining the factors that have infl uenced

their development.1 Many of the ideas for the origin of phenetics and

cladistics have been presented already in the previous chapters, but a

summary for all approaches is needed here.

Historical Infl uences

Figure 9.1 shows the perceived needs that infl uenced development

of the major approaches to biological classifi cation and their relation

to each other. Four principal needs can be documented. First is

the need to cope with increasing levels of knowledge about organic

diversity. This has continued to be of concern ever since humans

began classifying plants and animals in their environment.

1 People who have contributed to these developments have been numerous, as attested in

this and previous chapters. For a delightful tongue-in-cheek self-quiz on people and their

contributions, see Neticks (“Filo G.,” 1978) to read about “Bygeorge Mylord’s Winsome, Sir

Corns R. Popped, Flames S. Harrass, Garish Telson,” and others.

creasing objectivity and repeatability. A secondary influence

prevailed, however, as a reaction against phyletic classification,

namely that all evolutionary interpretations were too

difficult to determine and, hence, inappropriate as a basis

for classification. Likewise, cladistics developed primarily

from the need to have an objective and repeatable (and testable)

approach that stressed at least some aspect of evolution

(i.e., branching patterns). Because numerical phenetic

approaches developed prior to cladistics, the former served

as a strong influence toward stimulating numerical methods

in the latter. Nelson and Platnick (1981) suggested that cladistics

had its roots in pre-Darwinian natural approaches to

classification, but evidence is lacking for this contention. As

time has marched on, the limitations of cladistics have become

increasingly apparent, particularly with its emphasis

on parsimony (when the evolutionary process is clearly not

always so, e.g., in hybrid homoploid speciation, Rieseberg

et al. 1996), synapomorphy (known to possess statistical constraints;

Sneath 1996), and dichotomous evolution (largely

ignoring reticulate and progenitor-derivative origins; Volkman

et al. 2001). Grant (2001) showed how cladistic analysis

fails to reconstruct known pedigrees in the well-researched

genera Gilia (Polemoniaceae), Avena (Poaceae), Hordeum

(Poaceae), and Helianthus (Asteraceae). At the present time,

some workers are considering whether an explicit phyletic

approach to classification, which offers more evolutionary

information than the simple branching pattern of cladistics,

might be made more objective, repeatable, and testable.

In effect, the development of this more comprehensive

approach would involve quantitative influences from both

phenetics and cladistics.

It has obviously been a stimulus for the development of all

major approaches, but it can be highlighted best in the development

of the artificial system. The great artificial classification

of Linnaeus (1735) was created principally to

provide order and catalogue all the newly collected materials

coming back from many parts of the world (especially

from tropical regions). An artificial system of classification

is perfectly satisfactory for ordering this diversity, but such

a system lacks the information content that leads to higher

levels of predictivity. This search for increased information

content is the second need in biological classification, and it

resulted in the natural approach (“polythetic classification”)

in which many characters were considered, rather than only

one or just a few (“monothetic classification”). The development

of natural approaches to classification was pre-Darwinian,

and, therefore, evolutionary considerations were not

included. There was a third need, therefore, for a system that

not only had high information content but that also offered

evolutionary interpretations. With the appearance of the

theory of evolution by means of natural selection (Darwin

1859), a rationale existed for the construction of classifications

that reflected these interpretations. Thus was born the

phyletic (= evolutionary) approach to biological classification.

However satisfying the phyletic approach was for the

past 100 or so years, the fourth need, for increased objectivity

and repeatability in classification, has arisen in the past

five decades. This need represents a desire to break away

from the “art” of natural and intuitive phyletic classification

and place it on a more “scientific” basis. It was the primary

factor in the development of both phenetics amd cladistics.

Phenetics derived directly from natural classification by in-