Characters ending

[John Grehan]

Thanks David. I'm not going to track any more on this particular area
for now unless I have something of substance to add. No doubt I will at
some point.

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback. It's actually helpful, but to
understand what is going on in how others view a subject and even
perhaps get corrected on some things (or maybe I even manage to
stimulate some lateral thinking by others). No doubt the lack of clarity
rests in some cases with me. But it's just a discussion list so it's not
a worry (after all, even cladists sometimes don't agree with each other
on algorithms and sometimes even on definitions. It's like every subject
area.

John

John R. Grehan
Director of Science and Collections
Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Parkway
Buffalo, NY 14211-1193
email: jgrehan at sciencebuff.org
Phone: (716) 896-5200 ext 372
 
http://www.sciencebuff.org/biogeography/Panbiogeography/Panbiogeography-
Gate.htm
http://www.sciencebuff.org/primates/Human%20origins/Humanorigins.htm
http://www.sciencebuff.org/HepialidaeGate.htm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom Discussion List [mailto:TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU] On
> Behalf Of David Orlovich
> Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 3:16 PM
> To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] Characters.
> 
> On 25/06/2004, at 12:57 AM, John Grehan wrote:
> >
> > ok I did. This is probably a consequence of my use of a PAUP program
> > from some years ago where there was a choice one could make for
> > including or exlcuing autapomorphies. I would not use them. Since no
> > one does then
> 
> Hi John et al.,
> 
> Excluding the autapomorphies doesn't change the tree topology anyway
> (since they always map on to the terminal branches).  You do this in
> PAUP just so the consistency index is calculated without them -
> otherwise the consistency index is inflated by characters that played
> no part in the calculation of the most parsimonious tree.
> 
> Cheers, David.
> 
> Dr David Orlovich,
> Department of Botany,
> University of Otago,
> P.O. Box 56,
> Dunedin, New Zealand.
> 
> Phone: +643 479 9060
> Fax: +643 479 7583
> www: http://www.botany.otago.ac.nz/