Best Phenetics Software? - forwarded

[Murray Dawson]

For phenetics I have found Richard Pankhurst's
package "PANKEY" to be quite friendly. The
CHARS and ITEMS files are created together in
a single file in DELTA format. This package
can then output a matrix of similarity coefficients
(the Gower Coefficient) which is then read into
NTSYS for clustering or ordination. PANKEY also
does character analysis and has good identification
programs as well. Theoretically it outputs data
for PAUP but I don't think it has been upgraded
yet to output in NEXUS format (despite my hints
to Richard). It is available commercially from
Exeter Software in the States. Richard Pankhurst
can be contacted at r.pankhurst at rbge.org.uk

Hope this is helpful,

Bill



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William M.M.Eddie
Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology
University of Edinburgh
Daniel Rutherford Building
Mayfield Road
Edinburgh EH9 3JH
Scotland, UK
email: weddie at srv0.bio.ed.ac.uk
Tel. 0131 650 5327
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