homoplasy distribution

[Doug Yanega]

>Does anyone know of a published article where it has been demonstrated that
>homoplasy is not randomly distributed but that it tends to be concentrated
>in a subset of the characters?

Look at Roig-Alsina & Michener's Kansas Science Bulletin (55: 124-162,
1993) paper on the phylogeny of long-tongued bees for one such example.
There's a suite of characters that are shared by virtually all parasitic
bee taxa (mostly characters related to pollen collection and nest
construction), that essentially force the parsimony algorithm to cram those
taxa together despite the completely independent derivations of those
character states. There are so *many* characters involved in the homoplasy
that they tend to overwhelm what few genuine synapomorphies link them to
their true sister taxa.

Peace,


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
           http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82