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Confidence Intervals for Morphology-Based Cladistic Trees: A Platyrrhine Phylogeny Test Case

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Abstract

I estimate confidence intervals for phylogenetic trees based on bootstrap resampling while calculating special coefficients of similarity. I treat each successive cladistic dichotomy as a null hypothesis for sampling from a universe of cranial and postcranial synapomorphically-based similarities that includes the next lower similarity. Successive dichotomies that are not at significantly different similarity levels are collapsed into polytomies. Following a trial application to equid cladistic traits employed in Felsenstein's introduction (Felsenstein, J. (1985). Evolution 39: 783–791), I apply the methods to New World monkey relationships using morphological character sets. Unresolvable polytomies among platyrrhine subfamilies are the rule when these methods are applied.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois, 62901-4502

    Robert S. Corruccini

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Corruccini, R.S. Confidence Intervals for Morphology-Based Cladistic Trees: A Platyrrhine Phylogeny Test Case. International Journal of Primatology 22, 1007–1019 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012017722167

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