Testing Numerical Approaches to Phylogenetic Inference

生物体之间的进化关系是 生物科学的研究。 了解历史 在一个群体的历史中， 生物体必须先了解它们的功能， 生态学、地理分布，甚至它们与 医学研究 Robert索卡尔和F.詹姆斯·罗尔夫，因为 在过去的三十年里，开创了使用计算机 重建生物体之间的进化关系 形态学和分子学数据集。 几种不同 已经提出了重建遗传学的方法， (e.g.,最大简约法，最大似然法，总体 相似性）。 索卡尔和罗尔夫过去的研究表明， 在不同的情况下，这些替代方法中的每一种都会产生 最精确最稳定的计算机重建 生成分支历史。 他们现在建议开发新的 研究者可以选择最合适的方法 一种用于分析真实的数据的工具，其基础分支 历史不详。 将制定的方法和建议将具有广泛的 听众，包括研究所有生物的系统学家，以及 功能形态学家和生物学家， 进化关系提供了框架， research.

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.