Not really a very inspiring article IMO! The implication of your first
statement is that phylogenies based on morophology are often not concordent
with gene-based phylogenies. Certainly there are classic examples of
conflicting gene- and morphogically-based trees but I would say that this
is the exception and not the rule. Even the authors of the article point
out that "these new molecular data SOMETIMES are very different.." The
article goes on to briefly touch upon many of the causes that can result in
less than perfect phylogenetic estimations. Certainly one would EXPECT
there to be difficulties in estimating the phylogentic relationships among
groups of organisms that radiated over a very short amount of time. I
don't understand how things are getting "wierder." Rather than weirder we
are finding out how particular phenomena can exagerate the results of our
analysis and how we can increase the confidence in our estimations in the
future. Also a direct comparison of studies is not always possible and so
apparent conflicts are usually not as serious as they might seem. Even in
this paper they give the example of poor taxon sampling and how it can
effect basic topologies of trees. Anyone who has worked with sequence data
sets knows that underepresentation of groups leaves you vulnerable to long
branch attractions etc.. which will produce articial groupings.
regards,
joel duff
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