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Do you mean 2 randomly selected trees for the same specie? Otherwise that statement is not surprising at all.

shwaj 2y ago
It’s somewhat surprising to me. If you take any two furry animals, they are more closely related to each other than to a lizard.
- i_cannot_hack 2y ago
  Not really true. Kiwi birds are very furry (unless you define furry as having mammalian hair, which sort of defeats the point) and are more related to lizards than to mammals.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Right, that was my thinking. Though frequently incorrect, it is intuitive that similar things are more closely related than dissimilar thing.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Well no, 2 randomly selected trees for the same species are quite likely to have a recent common ancestor (contrasted with, say, a tree and fish) because they're the same species. I was under the mistaken impression that "tree" was a phylogenetic thing. Like, they're all descended from some distant great-grandmother-tree or something. The surprising thing was that this is not the case, and many separate species have all discovered how to tree individually.
renewiltord 2y ago
Well, I suppose the more striking statement is that you can find two trees and two bushes such that there is a tree/bush pair that is closer related than the tree/tree pair. Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgo/Maidenhair Tree) https://www.vdberk.com/trees/ginkgo-biloba-mascia/ https://www.vdberk.com/trees/ginkgo-biloba-mascia/ Pinus strobus (White Pine) https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=PIST https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=PIST Ephedra sinica (Chinese Ephedra/Ma Huang) https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/135489-Ephedra-sinica https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/135489-Ephedra-sinica Juniperus horizontalis (Creeping Juniper) https://www.gardenia.net/plant/juniperus-horizontalis-blue-chip https://www.gardenia.net/plant/juniperus-horizontalis-blue-c... I think visually the first two look alike and the last two look alike. I would phenotypically bucket them together. But the reality of genetic relation is different.

It’s somewhat surprising to me. If you take any two furry animals, they are more closely related to each other than to a lizard.

i_cannot_hack 2y ago
Not really true. Kiwi birds are very furry (unless you define furry as having mammalian hair, which sort of defeats the point) and are more related to lizards than to mammals.
__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Right, that was my thinking. Though frequently incorrect, it is intuitive that similar things are more closely related than dissimilar thing.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

Well no, 2 randomly selected trees for the same species are quite likely to have a recent common ancestor (contrasted with, say, a tree and fish) because they're the same species. I was under the mistaken impression that "tree" was a phylogenetic thing. Like, they're all descended from some distant great-grandmother-tree or something. The surprising thing was that this is not the case, and many separate species have all discovered how to tree individually.

renewiltord 2y ago

Well, I suppose the more striking statement is that you can find two trees and two bushes such that there is a tree/bush pair that is closer related than the tree/tree pair. Ginkgo biloba (Ginkgo/Maidenhair Tree) https://www.vdberk.com/trees/ginkgo-biloba-mascia/ https://www.vdberk.com/trees/ginkgo-biloba-mascia/ Pinus strobus (White Pine) https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=PIST https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=PIST Ephedra sinica (Chinese Ephedra/Ma Huang) https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/135489-Ephedra-sinica https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/135489-Ephedra-sinica Juniperus horizontalis (Creeping Juniper) https://www.gardenia.net/plant/juniperus-horizontalis-blue-chip https://www.gardenia.net/plant/juniperus-horizontalis-blue-c... I think visually the first two look alike and the last two look alike. I would phenotypically bucket them together. But the reality of genetic relation is different.