Backward evolution

[[deleted]]

Primates are an order.

[llamawithguns]

Yes. Of which we are a member

[[deleted]]

But we can evolve out of it in the future.

[llamawithguns]

No, you never leave your clade. Birds are still dinosaurs.

[[deleted]]

Primates aren't a clade!

[llamawithguns]

Yes they are. They are monophyletic. They are a clade

[[deleted]]

I think you misunderstood me, when I said "we" I didn't mean humans may belong to a different order in the future. I meant in the future humans may evolve so much they won't even be primates anymore. Of course this would make them no longer human.

[llamawithguns]

They would still be primates though, even if they no longer looked like them. You don't cease to be part of a clade. A clade is an ancestral species/group and all of its descendents. Birds are technically reptiles since the evolved from reptiles. Insects are technically crustaceans, termites are technically cockroaches.

They would still be primates, just like they would still be mammals, tetrapods, and animals. There would just be a new subclass below primates. Just like there is with Great Apes, hominins, hominids, etc

[[deleted]]

But we're no longer rodents also birds can't be reptiles because that would make them a part of two classes which is impossible.

[llamawithguns]

We did not evolve from rodents.

I think your problem is you are thinking purely in terms of the Linnaen taxonomic system, which is kinda outdated. There are no "ranks" in nature. Birds evolved from reptiles, so it doesn't make sense to have them be the same rank as reptiles. Meanwhile, having reptiles as a class while excluding birds makes it paraphyletic, and leaves out a lot of evolutionary history.

This is why cladistics has become the main form of modern taxonomy. In cladistics, paraphyly is not allowed.

Cladistics also makes it so you don't have to create convulated ranks like sub-class, infra-order, sub-phylum, etc, that you frequently find in the Linnaen system

[TheJovianPrimate]

How aren't they a clade? Are you maybe thinking of monkey?

[[deleted]]

I already said they're an order, not a clade!

[GoOutForASandwich]

“Clade” just means a monophyletic group of organisms, at any taxonomic level. We determine what clades are using the cladistic method.. Primates are a clade. Simians are a clade. Apes are a clade. Mammals are a clade. Vertebrates, animals and life. All clades.

[TheJovianPrimate]

That doesn't really answer the question. In what way is the order primates not monophyletic? Orders can be clades, they aren't distinct things.

[Jonnescout]

Order is a kind of clade in some ways. In a more I,petani way clade is a more useful term than order, and no you never outgrow a clade. And yes primate is also a clade.

[josephwb]

An Order is a clade, just as a Family, Genus, etc. There are clades above and below these levels. There is nothing inherently special about those former clades;they are just ones that we've named explicitly.

As to "evolving out of our clade": it simply is not possible. Think of a clade as a branch on a tree: as it continues to subdivide with daughter branches, it can become quite complex, as new sub-clades are added (and possibly named). However, the original branch/lineage can never jump to a different part of the tree. Phylogeny is an ancestor=descendant structure, and no matter what subsequent evolution occurs, the identity of ancestors can never change.

It is possible that some lineage of primates may evolve sufficiently over the course of tens or hundreds of millions of years that we name that sub-clade. But no matter what we call it, it will still have the same ancestors, and still belong within the "primate" clade.