More on probabilities of phylogenetic trees

[Tom DiBenedetto]

On Thu, 11 Sep 1997 09:43:37 -0700, Richard Zander wrote:

>Maximum parsimony, which is a belief-oriented analysis, is a first cut
>at the problem, not a "method of reconstruction by a discovery process."

What do you mean "belief-oriented'? And I would contend that it is
most certainly a
method of reconstruction by a discovery process. It is not a
statistical method of course, but that is a virtue, in my book...

>...how large must the
>numbers of synapomorphies be on a branch to give probabilistic
>confidence (P>.5) to the subclade?

If this P refers to the true tree, then I think the question is
meaningless.



Tom DiBenedetto                 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~tdib/
Fish Division                                   tdib at umich.edu
University of Michigan Museum of Zoology