Proximity, interpenetration, and sympatry networks: A Reply to Dos Santos et al.

Abstract

Whereas our examples are hypothetical, they all consist of patterns of coextensive sympatry easily revealed by visual inspection and properly detected by a method like that of Szumik and Goloboff (2004) but missed by SyNet. In actual studies, real distributions of species may not present the properties which mislead SyNet, but there is no way to know in advance whether this will be the case. It is entirely possible that, as assumed by SyNet, most of the areas of endemism will prove to be disjoint and nonoverlapping and that sympatry between species will prove to be either complete or nonexistent. But the only way to demonstrate that empirical data support such a type of distribution is by using methods which?unlike that of Dos Santos et al.?do not force the results to conform to that pattern.