Synopsis of Ozobryum (Pottiaceae, Bryophyta), and Sequential Bayes Evaluation of Genus Integrity

Abstract

Ozobryum G. L. Merr., once synonymized with Molendoa Lindb., is recognized as a good genus of Pottiaceae based on evaluation of it as a distinctive dissilient genus. Populations from Mexico are described as a new species, O. mexicanum R. H. Zander. The species Anoectangium warburgii Crundw. & M. O. Hill is transferred to Ozobryum. The genus is synthetically evaluated as integral in respect to other genera of the Pleuroweisieae through combination of critical methods of probabilism, including scientific theory, Granger causation, and verificationism, and of evidentialism, including constructivism, likelihoodism, Bayesianism, and analytic methods of classical taxonomy.

A New Rugose-Leaved Anoectangium (Pottiaceae) from Mexico

“…(Brinda & Zander 2020) or Ozobryum G.L.Merr. (Zander 2021). The form of the brood bodies is distinctive in the new species, basically shortened, thick, brown rhizoids serially divided into short cylinders by perpendicular cross walls.…”

Minimally monophyletic genera are the cast-iron building blocks of evolution

“…The methods of recent papers, particularly those of Zander (2013Zander ( , 2018Zander ( , 2021aZander ( , 2021b) associated with fractal evolution were evaluated by comparing optimal and alternative models of monothetic genera in The number of traits different between the outgroup and the inferred ancestral species is converted to Shannon informational bits, one bit per trait. The same is calculated for the number of traits different between the ancestral species and each of the immediate descendants.…”

“…Treating the bits of the posterior of an ancestor as the prior of the next is entirely equivalent to concatenating instances of Bayes' formula, thus we have sequential Bayes. The method (Good, 2011) was pioneered by A. Turing in breaking German codes during World War 2, but is now used (Zander, 2013(Zander, , 2018(Zander, , 2021a(Zander, , 2021b with Shannon informational bits rather than decibans. The essential statistical elements in the present paper are one ancestor, one or more descendant species, and an outgroup species; and the three elements are rendered as a minimum sequential Bayesian posterior probability (min SBPP), the outgroup providing the prior.…”