Lucy in Newsweek

[Don.Colless at CSIRO.AU]

-Herb Jacobson wrote:
My point was that clock-like mutation rates are necessary if overall
similarity is used to estimate phylogney.
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In actual fact evolutionary rates (not mutation rates) do not have to be precisely clock-like for phenograms to be good estimates of phylogeny. There is quite a lot of "jitter" in the system. But divergnce rates need to be roughly equal. I published a whole paper on this once (and it was reviewed by Steve Farris!), but I don't have the reference by me right now. 


Don Colless,
Div of Entomology, CSIRO,
GPO Box 1700,
Canberra. 2601.
Email: don.colless at csiro.au
Tuz li munz est miens envirun