[Taxacom] Antw:Re: Evolution of human-ape relationships, remains open for investigation

[P.H. HOVENKAMP]

This is exactly the topic of the discussion in the 70ties/80ies I referred to earlier.

If this post makes it to the list: scroll down in John's previous message to find a number of references to classic papers in which this topic is treated. To which may be added a paper by Maddison, Donoghue and Maddison from 1984 on outgroups and parsimony. 

Apparently, these are still relevant, and are to be considered required reading.

Peter Hovenkamp 

Op 11/08/11, John Grehan  <jgrehan at sciencebuff.org> schreef: 

> "Binary transformation series, whether restricted in a way that one
> character state is present in the ingroup and absent in the outgroup or
> not, contribute the same number of steps to a parsimony analysis
> independently of the polarity assessment so identifying polarity in this
> characters prior to the analysis is irrelevant."
> 
> But an algorithm cannot distinguish derived states if they are not
> specified. If one mixes in non-derived states and codes them as such,
> then no problem - but then why bother including them?
> 
> John Grehan
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
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