BRANCH SUPPORT AND TREE STABILITY

Abstract— Branch support is quantified as the extra length needed to lose a branch in the consensus of near‐most‐parsimonious trees. This approach is based solely on the original data, as opposed to the data perturbation used in the bootstrap procedure. If trees have been generated by Farris's successive approximations approach to character weighting, branch support should be examined in terms of weighted extra length needed to lose a branch. The sum of all branch support values over the tree divided by the length of the most parsimonious tree[s] provides a new index, the total support index. This index is a measure of tree stability in terms of supported resolutions, which is of prime importance in cladistic analysis.

[1]  J. Bull,et al.  An Empirical Test of Bootstrapping as a Method for Assessing Confidence in Phylogenetic Analysis , 1993 .

[2]  P. Goloboff.  HOMOPLASY AND THE CHOICE AMONG CLADOGRAMS , 1991, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[3]  K. Bremer,et al.  Morphology and phylogenetic interrelationships of the Asteraceae, Calyceraceae, Campanulaceae, Goodeniaceae, and related families (Asterales) , 1995 .

[4]  Jerrold I. Davis.  CHARACTER REMOVAL AS A MEANS FOR ASSESSING STABILITY OF CLADES , 1993, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[5]  J. Palmer,et al.  Phylogenetic Implications of rbcL Sequence Variation in the Asteraceae , 1992 .

[6]  A. Kluge,et al.  CLADISTICS: WHAT'S IN A WORD? , 1993, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[7]  P. Goloboff.  ESTIMATING CHARACTER WEIGHTS DURING TREE SEARCH , 1993, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[8]  M. Donoghue,et al.  Phylogenetic relationships of Dipsacales based on rbcl sequences , 1992 .

[9]  J. Farris.  A Successive Approximations Approach to Character Weighting , 1969 .

[10]  Daniel P. Faith,et al.  COULD A CLADOGRAM THIS SHORT HAVE ARISEN BY CHANCE ALONE?: ON PERMUTATION TESTS FOR CLADISTIC STRUCTURE , 1991 .

[11]  K. Bremer.  THE LIMITS OF AMINO ACID SEQUENCE DATA IN ANGIOSPERM PHYLOGENETIC RECONSTRUCTION , 1988, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[12]  D. Faith,et al.  LENGTH DIFFERENCES AND TOPOLOGY‐DEPENDENT TESTS: A RESPONSE TO KÄLLERSJÖ ET AL. , 1994 .

[13]  B. Bremer,et al.  Chloroplast DNA restriction site variation and phylogenetic interrelationships of some genera of the Heliantheae sensu lato (Asteraceae) , 1992 .

[14]  J. Palmer,et al.  A parsimony analysis of the Asteridae sensu lato based on rbcL sequences. , 1993 .

[15]  C. Bult,et al.  SKEWNESS AND PERMUTATION , 1992, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[16]  J. Felsenstein.  CONFIDENCE LIMITS ON PHYLOGENIES: AN APPROACH USING THE BOOTSTRAP , 1985, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[17]  A. Kluge,et al.  Regular ArticleCladistics: What's in a Word? , 1993 .

[18]  K. Holsinger,et al.  PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS OF CHLOROPLAST DNA RESTRICTION SITE DATA AT HIGHER TAXONOMIC LEVELS: AN EXAMPLE FROM THE ASTERACEAE , 1990, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[19]  D. Faith.  Cladistic permutation tests for monophyly and nonmonophyly , 1991 .

[20]  A. Kluge,et al.  Taxonomic congruence versus total evidence, and amniote phylogeny inferred from fossils, molecules, and morphology. , 1993, Molecular biology and evolution.

[21]  J. Farris.  THE RETENTION INDEX AND THE RESCALED CONSISTENCY INDEX , 1989, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[22]  E. Conti,et al.  Tribal relationships in Onagraceae: implications from rbcL sequence data , 1993 .

[23]  J. Carpenter.  Choosing Among Multiple Equally Parsimonious Cladograms , 1988, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.

[24]  J. Trueman.  RANDOMIZATION CONFOUNDED: A RESPONSE TO CARPENTER , 1993 .

[25]  B. Bremer,et al.  COMPARATIVE RESTRICTION SITE MAPPING OF CHLOROPLAST DNA IMPLIES NEW PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN RUBIACEAE , 1991 .

[26]  J. Farris,et al.  Immunological Distance and the Phylogenetic Relationships of the Rana Boylii Species Group , 1982 .

[27]  P. Goloboff.  Regular ArticleEstimating Character Weights during Tree Search , 1993 .

[28]  M. Källersjö,et al.  Phylogenetic analysis of the cichorioideae (Asteraceae) with emphasis on the Mutisieae , 1992 .

[29]  Cladistic Characters and Cladogram Stability , 1993 .

[30]  Michael J Sanderson,et al.  CONFIDENCE LIMITS ON PHYLOGENIES: THE BOOTSTRAP REVISITED , 1989, Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society.