Geometric Models of Speciation in Minimally Monophyletic Genera using High-Resolution Phylogenetics

High-resolution phylogenetics using both morphology and molecular data reveals surfactant-like trait buffering of peripatric descendant species that facilitates resilience for supra-specific entities across geologic time. Regular polygons inscribed in circles model balanced areas of survival of various numbers of new species in one genus. This models maximizing peripatric survival of descendant species, with populations partly in allopatric habitats and in sympatric areas. It extends theory advanced with Willis’s Age and Area hypothesis. Hollow curves of the areas bounded between a series of inscribed regular polygons and their containing circles show a ranked progression governed by similar power laws of other phenomena, including Zipf’s law and a universal meta-law in physics. This model matches best the physics meta-law (law of laws) but is only one of several somewhat different curves generated by somewhat different processes. A rule of four can explain why most genera in vascular plants exhibit a hollow curve of optimally one to five species per genus. It implies a constraint on variation that enhances survival, and provides a physics explanation for the monophyletic skeleton of macrogenera. A high-resolution form of ancestor-descendant analysis is compared to traditional phylogenetic analysis as to best modeling of the demonstrable results of evolutionary processes. Arguments are advanced for the preserving of scientific concepts of taxa over cladistic clades.