AS Response Questions

1. In Wonderful Life Gould hypothesizes on cultural values, assumptions, and what kind of logic are evident in the original interpretation of the Burgess Shale, and then the change in thinking that led to its recent re-interpretation. What model of biodiversity and evolutionary change does Gould argue resulted in the earlier error in classifying the Burgess Shale animals? What is the original cultural/historical source of that model, or what he calls “iconography”?

The problems with the original interpretations of the Burgess Shale method of evolution is that people simply assumed that all organisms came from a common source that eventually evolved into much more complex organisms over time.  I am not sure if I completely understood Gould's explanation of how evolution actually works.  But what I gathered is that it is not a step by step process as was misinterpreted.  It is instead a process that has many changes going on at the same time constantly.  The original historical that he refers to as "iconography" is from the AO Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Living.

2.  Notice that much of Gould’s argument centers on discussing evolutionary tress (phylogenies) of the kind you constructed on a small scale. At the end of the chapter we see he is interested in the overall shapes (“topology”) of the phylogenies. Why? What does he claim that the shape of phylogenies imply about how evolution happens over long stretches of time that had been neglected by biologists? What kinds of causal factors alter the course of evolution, the shape of phylogenies, and the eventual designs of organisms that we see today? 

The reason why Gould centers his argument on discussing phylogenies is because he is trying to show that evolution is intricate and complex at any point at which it is taking place.  His bush example adapts to this way of thinking because it is difficult to find the beginning and ends to the branches on the bush.  However, choosing an portion of that bush to look at will provide a well of information.  Not only this, Gould is trying to show that organisms adapt to their environments and that is what evolution truly is, instead of having a beginning and end for a "simple" organism to eventually reach one of great "complexity."

2B. Related: What does it mean to “replay the Tape of Life” and why is this an interesting idea to Gould? Relate Gould’s preferred model with the views of early Catastrophists – what would Cuvier (if alive) like and not like about Gould’s interpretation?

When Gould mentions replaying the tape of life he is saying that if the earth's evolution process was reversed and started over again that evolution would happen the same way.  I think that Cuvier would agree with Gould's interpretation if still alive.

3. What is “disparity” versus “diversity”? Give an original example (one not given in the reading). 

A disparate species is a species with little variation in different organisms of that given species while a diverse species is a species with  great variation.  An example of a disparate species would be humans and an example of a diverse species would be spiders.

4. In the reading Evolution by Walking what is so interesting about how the American Museum of Natural History has changed their mammal display? Why is it significant in how we think about biodiversity in his opinion? 

What is so interesting about how the American Museum of Natural changed their animal display is that they organize the animals into a tree-like structure in a cladogram.  What is so important about this structure is that it shows "how sequences of shared-derived characters can be used to build an icon of nested branchings based solely on temporal order of bifurcations, and not on perceived progress or increasing complexity.."