Sample size

[Derek Sikes]

There are some papers that deal with this issue- such as:

Graybeal, A. 1998.  Is it better to add taxa or characters to a difficult
phylogenetic problem?  Syst. Biol. 47: 9-17.


in which it is concluded that adding taxa dramatically improved the
accuracy of the trees constructed whereas adding more characters had a
much weaker influence on accuracy.

It is my opinion that one should have as many taxa in one's dataset as
possible- there are often odd taxa that can alter tree topologies
profoundly, which, if ignored, might result in trees far from the truth.


To make a puzzle one should start with as many pieces as one can get (too
bad so many pieces are already extinct!).

Given that even if we have all the taxa of our ingroups tree construction
is still non trivial- why make it more difficult by working with less
evidence?

-Derek Sikes



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Derek Sikes
Dept. of Ecology and Evol. Biology U-43
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269  USA

FAX: 860-486-6364

dss95002 at uconnvm.uconn.edu
http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/sikes

"Remember that Truth alone is the matter you are in Search after; and if
you have been mistaken, let no Vanity reduce you to persist in your
mistake." Henry Baker, London, 1785
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