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Australian Systematic Botany Australian Systematic Botany Society
Taxonomy, biogeography and evolution of plants
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Dealing with propositions, not with the characters: the ability of three-taxon statement analysis to recognise groups based solely on ‘reversals’, under the maximum-likelihood criteria

Evgeny V. Mavrodiev
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, PO Box 117800, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. Email: evgeny@ufl.edu

Australian Systematic Botany 29(2) 119-125 https://doi.org/10.1071/SB16006
Submitted: 12 March 2016  Accepted: 10 June 2016   Published: 17 October 2016

Abstract

Three-taxon statement matrices can be analysed using the maximum-likelihood method. In the present paper, it is demonstrated that groups based solely on putative reversals are always recognisable after maximum-likelihood analysis of three-taxon statement matrices, even without a priori recoding of the putative reversals as new character states or fractional weighting of three-taxon statements. Parametric implementations of three-taxon statement analysis still require more investigation. However, it must be highlighted that a focus on the set of hypotheses, rather than on the ‘actual data’, is required.

Additional keywords: evolutionary model, maximum parsimony, most probable hierarchies of patterns, parametric phylogenetics, plesiomorphy.


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