Phylogenetic morphometrics (I): the use of landmark data in a phylogenetic framework

CATALANO, SANTIAGO; GOLOBOFF, PABLO; GIANNINI, NORBERTO

CLADISTICS (PRINT)

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2010 vol. 26 p. 539 - 549

0748-3007

A method for the direct use of aligned landmark data (2D or 3D coordinates of comparable points) in phylogenetic analysis isdescribed. The approach is based on finding, for each of the landmark points, the ancestral positions that minimize the distancebetween the ancestor ⁄ descendant points along the tree. Doing so amounts to maximizing the degree to which similar positions of thelandmarks in different taxa can be accounted for by common ancestry, i.e. parsimony. This method requires no transformation ofthe aligned data or the results: the data themselves are the x, y, z coordinates of the landmarks, and the output of mapping acharacter onto a given tree is the x, y, z coordinates for the hypothetical ancestors. In the special case of collinear points, the results are identical to those of optimization of (continuous) additive characters.