Talk:Plesiomorphy and symplesiomorphy

Unclear text
This text may be correct, but it is not decipherable to anyone not very intimate with cladistics. It seriously need improvement. Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Can you be more specific about which parts are unclear? Does it need more examples that people can relate to, or more discussion about terms that might be unfamiliar to the reader? -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:06, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, it's the very technical language that's making this difficult. Am I right in assuming a plesiomorphy is a primitive trait, like more than one toe in odd-toed ungulates or lack of pholoem in mosses and liverworts? It's not immediately obvious from the text. I know phylogenetic nomenclature is kind of technical, but the basic concept behind it is quite simple, so there should be no need to go all Hennig and use expressions like "ancestral character state" and "pharyngeal gill in bony and cartilaginous fishes". Why not "primitive trait" and "the gills in fishes"? Petter Bøckman (talk) 07:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I understand, but some specifics are necessary for total clarity. A plesiomorphy is a primitive trait, but it's more than that: it's a primitive trait that's in reference to a more derived state. So the word plesiomorphy can't just be used in any context that refers to a primitive trait: word choice in phylogenetics is often fully based on context. Also, we can't really say "the gills in fishes" because the article text makes an important distinction between bony fish and cartilagenous fish, and the example depends on that distinction. I will try to further simplify the text, though. Thanks for your input. -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 19:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Rather than emulate the "short but precise" (but rather unreadable) style of Hennig (which I suppose is based on Germa, which is a bit like that), I would expend a few more sentences on it to make it readable. The most problematic aspect of cladistics is keeping all of Hennig's fancy words apart. I see no reason we should reproduce the worst aspects of his work for a general encylopedia. I'll put in some suggestions tomorrow, perhaps we can get it more readable without loosing the proper meaning. Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:58, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I am nothing more than a curious reader/ editor trying to understand this term. I've read over the article, and am now feeling slightly better that I understand what the term means, but still find the text somewhat opaque and would like to take a shot at expanding the fish w/ gills example a bit on my own to see if I've got it (and if I do "got it", that will bode well for the article generally!).  Someone will want to follow behind me and check my work, which, if malformed, may simply need to be reverted out.  But if I get it right, then I hope it will be useful for the future.  KDS 4444  Talk  00:00, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Nah. Tried to untangle this web of terms using the examples of the trait of possessing incisors common to all mammals but continually growing incisors as a derived trait unique to the subgroup of rodents, and just got lost in all the morphies and decided it was better I say nothing. What this article really needs are multiple examples (not just fish and their gills) to help the reader understand exactly how these terms are used (and how they are not used, or would be used incorrectly and why a given use would be incorrect).  None of this expansion needs to go into original research— it just needs to be laid out by someone who knows what they are talking about and I have concluded that that ain't gonna be me.  KDS 4444  Talk  00:59, 12 July 2015 (UTC)