character rewighting

[Donald Quicke]

Dear Taxacomers - a question to the cladists among us.

What do you think the best reweighting strategy for parsimony analysis is
when you have multiple islands of equally parsimonious trees? If you
include all the equally parsimonious trees when calculating the mean value
of whatever weighting function you are going to use, then the final weight
is likely to be influenced by the size of the islands. With maximum values
the problem may not be so bad, but nevertheless, very large islands are
more likely to include extremes.

All views welcomed,

thanks in advance

Donald Quicke

Department of Biology
Imperial College at Silwood Park
Ascot
Berks SL5 7PY
U.K.

Tel +44 (0)1344 294238    Home tel. +44 (0)1344 883788
Fax +44 (0)1344 294339    e-mail  d.quicke at ic.ac.uk