[Taxacom] Molluscan phylogeny (overview)

[Dr. David Campbell]

Molecular data don't actually significantly support polyphyly of 
bivalves; rather, monophyly versus polyphyly or paraphyly is not 
resolved.  I believe the best way to get a good feel for this sort of 
thing is to play around a lot with the data yourself.  Don't just run 
one analysis on your data.  Rather, keep running various analyses, look 
at and adjust the alignments, add in additional taxa, etc.  Groups that 
are consistently supported across multiple data sets and analyses are 
probably real; the novel result in your latest analysis might not be.  

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections Building
Department of Biological Sciences
Biodiversity and Systematics
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA