Pigmentation characters: an exemple of Sankoff characters from tinamous phylogeny

BERTELLI, S.

ORNITOLOGIA NEOTROPICAL

NEOTROPICAL ORNITHOLOGICAL SOC

Año: 2004 vol. 15 p. 1 - 7

1075-4377

In a cladistic analysis of tinamous, special attention was paid to character definition and scoring of non-traditional characters for phylogenetic reconstruction of birds. For example, transformation costs between states were applied (Sankoff characters) to analyze the egg coloration on the basis of pigment composition. In this scheme, lesser costs were assigned to transformations between more similar states. This approach is similar to that applied to plumage characters (overlap of pigmentation patterns) in a previous study. The present study shows that changes between several states of pigmentation characters are not a consequence of the imposed penalty in the cost regime, but an interaction with other characters. This is interpreted as evidence that multistate characters with complex costs among characters states (as in pigmentation characters) are not an artifact and should be used to describe relative degrees of similarity.