Re: Poster showing evolution and tree of life

On Nov 13, 6:40 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
hersheyh wrote:
On Nov 13, 10:49 am, nealOlan...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Nov 11, 10:06 am, nealOlan...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I wanted to purchase a poster showing a high-level tree-of-life, a
cladogram illustrating evolution and cladistics. But I searched and
searched and couldnt find a decent one (the few I did find where too
verbose, or focused on a single Class or Family). So I ended up
drawing my own. Anyone is free to download it (JPEG or PDF) and print
it, it is at:

http://www.tellapallet.com/tree_of_life.htm

100% of the data came from reputable sources (Science journal, NIH,
etc), but if you find any errors please let me know so I can rectify
them.

Of course, non-evolution people will think the whole poster is an
error ... so I dont need to hear about that :-)

Thanks for all the feedback. I appreciate it! My brief responses:

1) Biased to humans / too anthropomorphic - Guilty. I did that
deliberately since the poster is aimed at children. I've seen some
evolution cladograms that are "non biased" and they are pretty dull to
laymen because they are 95% bacteria and insects. I'll leave it to
the PhDs to builld unbiased tree of life's.

My preference is "non-biased" *especially* because children are so
visual in their learning. I don't think that real learning should be
in the business of supporting and reinforcing our 'natural biases'.
It should be in the business of combating such prejudices. Showing
the full scope of the biological universe we live in without human
bias has important ecological (and not just for those kids who will
become professional biologists), and not just evolutionary,
implications: we are merely one tiny part of nature. Getting students
to go beyond the 'warm, large, and furry (or feathered)' is an
important pedagogical goal of presenting a cladistic picture IMHO.

This might be accomplished, for instance, by making a tree at the
approximate level of "order" (itself a process biased towards humans,
but never mind) and then putting a "you are here" sign on the primates.
Is there even such a thing as an "order" in bacteria?

Bacterial orders exist in the same sense that, say, mammalian ones do.
Wikipedia lists dozens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bacterial_orders

.

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