Increasing the number of discrete character states for continuous characters generates well-resolved trees that do not reflect phylogeny  

作　　者：Jérémie BARDIN Isabelle ROUGET Margaret Mary YACOBUCCI Fabrizio CECCA 

机构地区：[1]Sorbonne University,Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University(UPMC-P6),Paris,France [2]National Museum of Natural History(MNHN),Paris,France [3]The National Center for Scientific Research(CNRS),Paris,France [4]Department of Geology,Bowling Green State University,Bowling Green,Ohio,USA

出　　处：《Integrative Zoology》2014年第4期531-541,共11页整合动物学（英文版）

摘　　要：Since the introduction of the cladistic method in systematics,continuous characters have been integrated into analyses but no methods for their treatment have received unanimous support.Some methods require a large number of character states to discretise continuous characters in order to keep the maximum level of informa­tion about taxa differences within the coding scheme.Our objective was to assess the impact of increasing the character state number on the outcomes of phylogenetic analyses.Analysis of a variety of simulated datasets shows that these methods for coding continuous characters can lead to the generation of well-resolved trees that do not reflect a phylogenetic signal.We call this phenomenon the flattening of the tree-length distribution;it is influenced by both the relative quantity of continuous characters in relation to discrete characters,and the num­ber of characters in relation to the number of taxa.Bootstrap tests provide a method to avoid this potential bias.

关 键 词：CLADISTICS continuous character gap weighting PHYLOGENY 

分 类 号：TN9[电子电信—信息与通信工程]