Constructing tracks.
"The appeal, and perhaps the pitfall, of track construction is its
simplicity. As a method it is so easy that 'anyone' can do it for any
group of organisms.
Tracks are simply a graphic representation of the
spatial structure present in a distribution.
Where different taxa are
concerned, the track provides a representation of the spatial structure
relevant to the evolutionary differentation of those taxa.
In other
words, space and time are integral to the evolution of physical or
biological form."
Another characterization of track constuctability is:
"The "tracks" are lines connecting areas which contain many disjunct species in unrelated taxanomic groups"
Since tracks represent both a spatial representation of a genetic continuum and may connect points areally of most closely related taxa, tracks with a defined width may express differences in biogeographic congruence differentiated (often by vicariance) in multiple groups in the same graph, provided the generalization of individual tracks have different relationships to nodes, masses and baselines in the generalized track thus presented as it crosses the region.
There seems to be a trend but also an outlier that is not nested.
Is this one individual track, a generalized track with a node or
something else? or from Terrepene c. carolina below. Are other semantics that related individual tracks to masses through nodes associated with baselines possible? (not pictured)
Here I will show a use of a (Conway)nim sum (find same locations for compared tracks and delete, then find the sum or minimal span of the remaining localities) like function of multiple individual tracks (where different scales are considered for deletion). This provides a estimate of track width and an outline of the geography of the nodes (beyond the individual track towards the genearlized one).
