Talk:Primitive (phylogenetics)

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Untitled
I just noticed this article has been flagged for possible removal to Wiktionary. Since the quality of being primitive (basal) is a fairly important concept in biology, any help in expanding this bare stub into an encyclopedic article would be appreciated. Some ideas: Ginkgo100 22:03, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Include what methods biologists use to determine whether an organism is primitive or derived. (For example: morphology, genetics)
 * Explain how the quality of being primitive is subjective, based on comparisons.
 * Explain how these comparisons relate to cladistics.


 * User:LifeScience has kindly expanded this article, although it still needs some work, particularly citations. (Unfortunately, my books will be packed for at least another couple of months.) I wonder if it might be better to merge derived and basal together with this one. --Ginkgo100talk 20:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I have expanded the article, though the writing needs a lot of attention and I am time-constrained. I don't agree that merging this article with the cladistic or phylogenetic material would be worth while; primitive isn't really a modern technical term, as I hope readers will agree. JonRichfield (talk) 13:37, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Citation needed
The page you quote from Gould has nothing to do with the sentence you attached it to. -68.107.137.178 (talk) 06:33, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

Please discuss article questions on the article's talk page, also please don't make it personal:

Hi. The citation you removed from Primitive (phylogenetics) discussed the concept in question usefully; please explain what you would rather see there. Furthermore, in reverting the entire edit you removed a few unrelated items; what was your reason for that? Even if you can justify your distaste for the first citation, that was disruptive and might be regarded as discourteous. JonRichfield (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

The page does not support "primitive in the sense most relevant to phylogenetics means resembling the first living things and in particular resembling them in the simple nature of their anatomy and behaviour." You also added quotes to the article, and I could not find these quotes in the book. Maybe I missed something?

As you changed the sentence to support the citation and added a page about a completely different topic, I was lost about what you intended, and I could only revert the entire addition. -68.107.137.178 (talk) 15:10, 18 April 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, fair enough. Note however that while we are being non-personal, I did NOT change the text to fit the citation; I changed it because the wording was nonsensical and I gave the book as a citation because Gould included a lucid remark on the topic. It was nothing to do with the original wording. You SURELY can't take seriously "resembling the first living things" for "primitive"? Even the wording preceding my recent edits refuted that. I now have made extensive associated changes, still omitting that citation. Please respond here with suggestions, including the current suitability of that citation, which is a useful one because most readers could access it easily and it is an easy read. I am not averse to making further changes, nor even to supporting any acceptable edits you make, but it is a lot more constructive generally a lot more productive to reply to assailable points in the talk page rather than applying large-scale reversions because of failure to approve local regions of text. JonRichfield (talk) 08:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Major rewrite
A major rewrite was initiated by Michaplot, which was reverted by Materialscientist on the grounds of suspected vandalism. I think that the original version was not appropriate for a Wikipedia article; it read like an essay or a piece of teaching text. (I'm not saying that there was anything necessarily wrong with it viewed like this.) So I have restored Michaplot's changes and made some copy-edits. I think a cladogram could usefully be added to illustrate "basal" vs. "derived". Peter coxhead (talk) 20:22, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * (Weird. I am not sure what one would need to do to avoid suspicion of vandalism.) My problem with the previous version is that I believe it was egregiously incorrect, and was not encyclopedic in tone. I felt like it was not salvageable, so I (boldly) rewrote the article. The alternative was to delete most of the article as unsourced. What I wrote is a woefully rudimentary treatment and needs work, though I think this article does not need to be too lengthy
 * Perhaps a table of synonymous terms? A diagram could be useful as well.Michaplot (talk) 02:15, 4 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree a table and a diagram would be useful, plus a couple of some well-sourced examples – sourced in the sense that the explains the underlying concept in terms of the example, rather than editors attempted to explain the concept using examples they themselves chose. I'll look around. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:53, 4 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree the rewrite so far is rudimentary and needs more work. But a rewrite is overdue, so you've made a good start Michaplot. A related concept which also needs revisiting is living fossil. Here are some relevant links:   --Epipelagic (talk) 09:16, 4 November 2015 (UTC)



I threw this together. How about something like this? I stole the idea from the UC Museum of Paleontology. The text would explain that legs are primitive within the dinosaur clade but advanced the entire clade shown (basically vertebrates). Similarly, wings are advanced within the whole clade, but primitive within the birds.Michaplot (talk) 16:36, 4 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Seems good to me :) --Epipelagic (talk) 06:07, 5 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks Epipelagic. Hopefully someone can fix the image and caption layout. I have also added a first shot at a table and a subsection for examples. These would be the sourced examples Peter coxhead suggested. When I get back to my office next week, I will look in some books and see if there are good examples we can cite.


 * So as I worked on this article it seemed to make sense to include some discussion of the opposite term(s) as well. I notice there does not seem to be an article for derived or advanced (phylogenetics). Do people think having only a full article on the term primitive is appropriate? It seems to me there are three options for including the opposite term(s): 1) create a separate article for the opposite term(s); 2) change this article to be inclusive of both; or, 3) keep it as is, with the primary focus and title of the article on primitive, but mention the opposite term(s) by way of comparison. I think I would lean towards option 2), but am interested to hear others' thoughts.


 * I notice there is an article for basal, which also could use some work. We might want to mention the term basal in this article or at least link the article in some way and be sure both articles make the same claims. The basal article has some questionable stuff in it. I will consult some of my sources and see if I can work on that article a bit.


 * Hey, Epipelagic, I looked at the living fossils article and it could definitely use some work. A lot of claims (e.g. the average "lifespan" of a species) are made but few are sourced. The list of examples seems very sketchy and does not seem to be well sourced. I may chop out a lot of that article after I consult some sources (including the nice ones you gave), though such a radical revision may subject me to vandalism charges by Materialscientist :).Michaplot (talk) 20:39, 7 November 2015 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned over at TOL, this term is synonymous with Basal (phylogenetics) to my knowledge, but has gone out of favour in recent years. If that's the case, the two should be merged. FunkMonk (talk) 17:56, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposed merge
I expected a merge discussion heading to have been automatically added, since there's a merge proposal on the page, but it hadn't.

I weakly oppose a merge - primitive applies to traits, and basal applies to clades. I would support a merge into ancestral (phylogenetics) or an equivalent if it exists, or a redirect if it doesn't. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:17, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * See the last comment in the section above for earlier proposal. I'm not sure the distinction you outline is clear cut. Clades were called primitive too, and traits can be basal as well. The terms overlap/are interchangeable, hence the merge suggestion. FunkMonk (talk) 18:21, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * On further perusal I see the equivalent is plesiomorphy and symplesiomorphy. Lavateraguy (talk) 18:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Those are more specific to traits. But again, primitive/basal can refer to both traits and clades, and are much more generic. FunkMonk (talk) 18:40, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you have any examples FunkMonk? In a scientific context, primitive (or more commonly ancestral) should only be used to refer to characters. People have, and still do, refer to organisms or clades as primitive, but this is an incorrect usage. Similarly, how can a trait be basal? (See the UCMP Glossary of Phylogenetics for a non-technical reference)Michaplot (talk) 04:34, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, don't take my word for it, it is easy to find examples. If you just Google "basal trait" for example, numerous scholarly examples pop up. FunkMonk (talk) 05:50, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Symplesiomorphies and Synapomorphies
I think this article can lead to an erronous interpretation of the actual meaning of both of those words.

The modern definitions of both is that a symplesiomorphy means a trait shared by two or more groups/taxa that doesn't imply relatedness, or in other words, that does not lead to a unique shared common ancestor. It could be either because of a reversion of a derived trait or sharing a "primitive" trait, and those similarities have very different evolutionary histories.

Similarly, a synapomorphy is a trait shared by two or more groups/taxa that implies a unique shared common ancestor. Two shared "advanced" traits, like fin-like appendages, could have risen recently but could still not be synapomorphic.

By the way,the term primitive has been largely abandoned by modern biology and phylogenetic studies. I feel that should be mentioned right at the start of the article. --GuiSapito (talk) 21:35, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * terminology in a cladistic context has been a continuing problem in the English Wikipedia for many years. The underlying problem is that observation may show that usage has changed since the original Hennigian era, but providing a source that says so is sometimes very difficult. Secondary sources that we should use, such as biology glossaries or dictionaries, are rarely helpful. For example, The Kew Plant Glossary has:
 * plesiomorphy, plesiomorphic, (of a character), ancestral, primitive
 * symplesiomorphies, (in cladistics) shared ancestral characters
 * Neither support the view that a (sym)plesiomorphy can arise from "a reversion of a derived trait".
 * I agree about "primitive", but do you have a source that says that it has "been largely abandoned"? We can't say so without one. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)