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Message: <blockquote data-quote="njlarsen" data-source="post: 3513620" data-attributes="member: 7427">I think what Laurent is thinking about is the more general question of when monophyly would be required vs not. To take the Motmot example: from the middle of a clade, one group of birds moved to an island. They went through some bottleneck and some fast selection and became different enough that they now are considered a different species. The thing that "that unifies 'the species' as a whole" is that the rest are all present on the mainland and are connected through gene flow. Laurent, if I have misunderstood, please correct. Niels</blockquote>