Why Was Neofinetia Changed to Vanda?

[tropterrarium]

Notice at the split below the big Vanda polygamy, it reads "-/1", which means there is essentially no support for that split, which means that Neofenetia is in that major basal polytomy of Vanda, which then means, Neofenetia is just a Vanda.
I was wrong with the paraphyly, but I think the inclusion of Neofenetia in Vanda makes perfect sense. Hybridization data also confirms the close relationship of Neofenetia with the other Vandas.

[Fairorchids]

This whole issue has no clear answer. Any taxonomic distinctions are entirely man made (and orchids don't read books, so they don't care). And, orchids make it more difficult to evaluate, since plants that are quite distantly related can breed, and produce non-sterile offspring!

This latter is important, when you consider that you can breed a zebra with a donkey. Most matings do not produce offspring, but a few do. However, all offspring are sterile (just like horse x donkey = mule).

What does this tell us? They are obviously related, otherwise they could not breed at all. However, do they belong to the same genus or not?

I was very upset with the changes, untill I decided to simply ignore the taxonomists, and stay with the traditional visual distinctions.

[My Green Pets]

That is so awesome, Camille.

I love how Phal. cornu-cervi is at the top branch. Phals do look like chubby cousins of the Vandas.

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by CambriaWhat

That is so awesome, Camille.

I love how Phal. cornu-cervi is at the top branch. Phals do look like chubby cousins of the Vandas.

I may be wrong, but I think the Phal was added in more as a control than to really test for similarity.

[Fairorchids]

And you can breed Vanda x Phal. Yet, Kew Gardens elected not to lump Phals into the Vanda complex.

[NYCorchidman]

There are other issues with molecular systematics or phylogenetics.
Very different results can come out depening on assumptions and models used even with the same dataset.

I think it should be just left in the scientific field to mess with names all they want, but should not be forced on renaming everything, if that's possible. lol

[Orchid Whisperer]

IMO, answer to original question:

Bored
plant
taxonomists.

[SilverShaded]

Originally Posted by NYCorchidman

I understand that we humans and chimpanzees are very different on the outside while sharing some similarities. but then our DNA and theirs are about 98% (last read) identical, yet we are not in the same category as primate.

Humans are in the order of Primates.

[OkiFred]

So just a few points that may help clarifying some things.

The authors just suggest a Vanda group s.l. (sensus lato) in which Neofinetia would be included. While they suggest the merging, they also insist that more data are needed and especially that in future studies of Vanda a good sampling of other genera such as Neofinetia etc... should be included.

Now a few precisions about the phylogeny.

The "relatedness" between species is not measured by the bootstrap value, but rather by the "distance" (second value on the branches).
The bootstrap indicates the "robustness" of the node (basically you make XX times the same analysis with a random subset of data and you see how many times you get the same topology).

Yes it is right that different methods may give different results, in the tree provided by Camille, they use a maximum parsimony method, this method is "rather old" and quite sensitive to long branch attraction (i.e. species very different from the others (=long branches) will tend to group together at the base of the tree even if they are not related to each other). However, in their paper they also use a maximum likelihood (to my opinion a bit more reliable) that gives the same results. Serious papers should include several methods (as done here) and usually if the results are the same no matter the method, then you can be more confident in the results.

Finally for those who ask about "who has the right to change". Basically such research papers are evaluated by independent specialists before publication (peer-review). If the specialists agree that the research was made seriously and is worth publishing, then the paper is published. Then for the nomenclature, there is a code to follow with clear rules on the validity of names, etc... But in all cases, for a name or a change of name to be valid, it must be approved (mainly through peer-review) by the specialists community. Adn if someone is not happy, anybody is free to do another study and submit it for publication, if the data and the research is good, then it will be published.

Sorry for the long text but I hope it may help a bit understanding phylogeny eventhough I am not a botanist (even is still many people think corals are plants).

[tropterrarium]

OkiFred makes good points. I may add the following:
- Phal etc. are added as "outgroups", so help to identify the direction (or polarity) of changes. Nobody suggests that Phal and Vanda are closely related.
- Re acceptance, that is in the court of public opinion. Peer review helps to weed out some of the really poor studies, but classification changes usually occur after they are found to be extremely robust, or have been found in multiple independent studies.
- In this paper, the various methods come to the same conclusion with respect to Neofinetia, which is a good sign.
- Re fertility of offspring, that has to do with species concept, of which there are multiple. Biological is one, but there is also morphological, phylogenetic, recognition, cohesion, and a few minor ones. Those interested, read up on it. Biological species concept is possibly rather poor choice in the case of orchids.