BioConcepts

pattern cladisticsMusterkladistik (ger.)

• Cladistics that does not presuppose genealogical or evolutionary relationships.
  category systematics

  1982

  the new cladists have even given up the goal of representing genealogy (e.g., Nelson and Platnick, 1981; Patterson, 1981). Descent with modification is too much of an assumption. Even descent is too much. Genealogy smacks too much of evolution, and evolutionary hypothesizing is under too much fire. Put more positively, the new cladists believe that cladistics per se has no “necessary connection” with evolutionism (e.g., Nelson and Platnick, 1981:164; Patterson, 1981). What they mean by that is that no evolutionary suppositions are necessary to discover the sort of “pattern” that they hypothesize/assume is characteristic of the living world. Hence the name “pattern” cladists. What sort of pattern in this? It is a strict hierarchy of groups, where the groups at one level are nonoverlapping, or mutually exclusive, and where each of the groups at one level is completely included in the group at the next highest level. […] Patterson (1981) stressed what he seemed to consider a positive aspect‑namely that pattern cladistics is more “theory neutral” than the original brand

  Beatty, J. (1982). Classes and cladists. Syst. Zool. 31, 25-34: 29; 30; cf. Brady, R.H. (1982). Theoretical issues and “pattern cladistics”. Syst. Zool. 31, 286-291.