Sorry, as stated above I misunderstood "There is no such thing as a tree." to mean that OP though taxonomic trees were fundamentally broken in some way, I misunderstood OP!
That said, if we had perfect knowledge of the speciation process over the years, would our taxonomy not be extremely close to a perfect tree, where every node has 2+ branches, and branches don't converge to being species-compatible for breeding?
I get convergent evolution, but among large (let's say 10g+) organisms, I'm not aware of convergent evolution resulting in compatible species that would not otherwise have been compatible?
I'm super rusty on this topic, but if there is theory that large organism actual DNA-level speciation (resulting in individuals who cannot reproduce together) has eventuated to convergence back to a new species (who can reproduce together), I'd love a source. I definitely could have very rusty knowledge on this but it seems intuitive to me?
That said, if we had perfect knowledge of the speciation process over the years, would our taxonomy not be extremely close to a perfect tree, where every node has 2+ branches, and branches don't converge to being species-compatible for breeding?
I get convergent evolution, but among large (let's say 10g+) organisms, I'm not aware of convergent evolution resulting in compatible species that would not otherwise have been compatible?
I'm super rusty on this topic, but if there is theory that large organism actual DNA-level speciation (resulting in individuals who cannot reproduce together) has eventuated to convergence back to a new species (who can reproduce together), I'd love a source. I definitely could have very rusty knowledge on this but it seems intuitive to me?