Can anyone explain how the moth got it's owl eyes?

[Yttrium]

Of course that us how the clad is supposed to work. I understand that. But then there should be an ancestral species for any clad beyond it. I speak with familiar though often arbitrary levels of classification that make the point, and it applies to any clads you would want to use. For what families, and so on, are the first ancestral species determined? If it can't be determined for all, it should be for some clads to be meaningfully understood.

We've got a really big and complicated taxonomy chart. It's a bit messy, and it's constantly being adjusted, but any ancestor species is going to fall somewhere on that chart, just like the clade. I'm not sure what your problem is.

 

[FredVB]

We've got a really big and complicated taxonomy chart. It's a bit messy, and it's constantly being adjusted, but any ancestor species is going to fall somewhere on that chart, just like the clade. I'm not sure what your problem is.

I do not have any problem with this, myself. Whatever it is, it is. I see that if there is a common ancestor there is the clade from that. It works that way. But, I do not see that there is a defined ancestral species to any clade, which is known. If there is, go ahead and tell me about it. That would show I am wrong about it. I just haven't seen it yet, and I considered many clades, I was quite interested in fact that there was a lot of material for clades being explained. Asking this does not actually require knowing the exact ancestral individual at the start of any clade, (how would it be known from any fossil? That detail would not be likely found...) just the species, which should be definitive enough.