#zoo reply
God that “ants are wasps!” post drives me crazy. Just total misunderstanding of phylogenetics turned into misinformation. The unqualified bug people on this site really need to stop sometimes.
#the problem is that wasps are not a monophyletic group #to make wasps a monophyletic group families such as Scoliidae would have to be excluded or ants and bees would have to be included #both of these options are bad so wasps are not a clade #we see this type of unproductive generalization all the time though: #’humans are fish’ #’dolphins are whales’ #also in general people consistently struggle to figure out how relatedness works and cannot read phylogenetic trees accurately at all #I spend most of my office hours explaining how phylogenetic trees work and crown group relatedness
Just gonna reblog with these tags from @bulldykepinetree because this is spot on.
God that “ants are wasps!” post drives me crazy. Just total misunderstanding of phylogenetics turned into misinformation. The unqualified bug people on this site really need to stop sometimes.
Technically if you trace every living thing on earth back far enough we’re all zooplankton. ‘Being related on a phylogenetic tree’ does not equal ‘the same thing’.
#is it bad when I freak out that giraffes are deer?#should I stop doing that#I’m going to stop doing that
I got good news for you! Giraffes are NOT deer.
They do come from the same order as deer; Artiodactyla.Which includes all even-toed ungulates, like camels, goats, cows, sheep, pigs, llamas, antelopes, and cetaceans (as they evolved from ungulates).
Under this is a suborder; Ruminantiawhich includes all the Artiodactylas that use rumination digestion, includes giraffesand deer, as well as goats, cows, antelopes and so on.
Deer and giraffes then diverge into two separate families; the deer in Cervidae and giraffes into Giraffidae.So it makes giraffes very much not deer. As deer are the family group Cervidae.
It’s sort of like saying that bears are dogs / canines. Bears and canines are both under the same order; Carnivora and the same suborder Caniformia. But they are two seperate family groups; Canidae (dogs) and Ursidae (bears).
Taxonomy can be a bit tricky to wrap your head around so hopefully this helps explain a little about how we order animals based on evolution.
