Bayesian and parsimony approaches reconstruct informative trees from simulated morphological datasets.

ABSTRACT: Phylogenetic analysis aims to establish the true relationships between taxa. Different analytical methods, however, can reach different conclusions. In order to establish which approach best reconstructs true relationships, previous studies have simulated datasets from known tree topologies, and identified the method that reconstructs the generative tree most accurately. On this basis, researchers have argued that morphological datasets should be analysed by Bayesian approaches, which employ an explicit probabilistic model of evolution, rather than parsimony methods-with implied weights parsimony sometimes identified as particularly inaccurate. Accuracy alone, however, is an inadequate measure of a tree's utility: a fully unresolved tree is perfectly accurate, yet contains no phylogenetic

SUBMITTER: Smith MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6405459 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature