Testing Numerical Approaches to Phylogenetic Inference

生物之间的进化关系是生物科学研究的核心。通过一组生物的历史了解分支和分化的历史，必须先于了解它们的功能、生态、地理分布，甚至它们与医学研究的相关性。Drs。罗伯特·索卡尔和f·詹姆斯·罗尔夫在过去的三十年里，率先使用计算机根据形态和分子数据集重建生物体之间的进化关系。已经提出了几种不同的方法来重建系统发生（例如，最大简约，最大似然，总体相似性）。Sokal和Rohlf过去的工作表明，在不同的情况下，这些替代方法中的每一种都能对计算机生成的分支历史进行最准确、最稳定的重建。他们现在建议开发新的方法，研究人员可以选择最合适的工具来分析真实的数据，其中潜在的分支历史是未知的。将要开发的方法和建议将有广泛的读者，包括研究所有生物的系统学家、功能形态学家和生物地理学家，对他们来说，进化关系为他们的研究提供了框架。

Evolutionary relationships among organisms are central to research in the biological sciences. Understanding the history of branching and divergence through the history of a group of organisms must precede an understanding of their function, ecology, geographic distribution, even their relevance for medical research. Drs. Robert Sokal and F. James Rohlf have, for the past three decades, pioneered the use of computers for reconstructing evolutionary relationships among organisms based on morphological and molecular data sets. Several different approaches have been proposed for reconstructing phylogenies (e.g., maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, overall similarity). Past work by Sokal and Rohlf has shown that under different circumstances, each of these alternate methods produces the most accurate and stable reconstruction of a computer- generated branching history. They now propose to develop new methods with which investigators can select the most appropriate tool for analyzing real data, for which the underlying branching history is unknown. The methods and advice to be developed will have a wide audience, including systematists working on all organisms, and functional morphologists and biogeographers, for whom evolutionary relationships provide the framework for their research.