selecting just the right cladogram

[Kipling Will]

Greetings all,

I am trying to pull together literature dealing with selection of a
particular cladogram from a set of  equally parsimonious cladograms. I
have found only a few papers [listed below] and hope that some of you
could point to additional papers that directly deal with this issue or a
systematic work that faced choosing and explicitly discusses their
methodology. I have several questions ....
Has anyone published using Sang's AUCC measure? Could Goloboffs'(1993)
maximum fit be used as a criterion for selection (not to generate the
trees but rather to judge MPTs)? Is selection based on evidence external
to the analysis preferable for guiding selection (biogeography, overall
similarity, explainable character transformations...)?


I would appreciate any additional papers/opinions people may have in
regard to the methods presented in the papers below.

Carpenter, J. M. (1988). Choosing among multiple equally parsimonious
cladograms. Cladistics 4:291-296.

Sang, T. (1995). New measure of distribution of homoplasy and
reliability of parsimonious cladograms. Taxon. 44:77-82.

Sharkey, M.J. (1989). A hypothesis independent method of character
weighting for cladistic analysis. Cladistics. 5:65-87.

--------------k.

-anything to change the subject-
--
---------------------
Kipling Will
2144 Comstock Hall
Dept. of Entomology
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-1351
http://henry.ento.cornell.edu/CUIC/will.htm
---------------------
The grand fact of the natural subordination of organic beings in groups
under groups, which, from its familiarity, does not always sufficiently
strike us, is in my judgement thus explained.  -Darwin