Field Guide to Cladists

Many of our readers who subscribe to EvolDir probably saw the message announcing the upcoming event: "Beyond Cladistics: A Festschrift for Prof C J Humphries" a few days ago. Since the link to the program had some kind of error and since when Rich introduced me to the blog, he said he hoped I would offer some insight into the minds of Cladists, I thought I would both post the correct program link and offer a few words of (attempted) explanation. If you're wondering, "What the heck is a "festschrift?!", these are traditional amongst the Cladists, who definitely are lovers of tradition - and are simply books of collected contributions in honor of one of them presented by colleagues and former students. Oftentimes, these are accompanied by events where these authors present papers that highlight topics of relevance to said honoree. As Wikipedia points out, for those non-elitists, these usually are called "symposia" and the books are called "Essays in Honor of..." I won't be attending this festschrift, but am very curious about some of these talks - especially those that by the title seem to suggest that there's a resurgence of phenetics and of course many which seem to promise to discuss the future of cladistics. Perhaps I can get some reports from my colleagues here who might attend. I'll let you know in October.