ADEQUACY OF NUMERICAL TAXONOMIC METHODS - FURTHER EXPERIMENTS USING SIMULATED DATA

The adequacy of various phenetic and phylogenetic estimation methods w as evaluated using simulated data sets. Two parsimony programs were us ed to construct maximum parsimony trees (WAGNER 78 and HENNIG 86). The CAFCA program was used to perform group-compatibility analysis. Four UPGMA clustering strategies were employed. The simulation model GENESI S was used to generate data sets under different evolutionary conditio ns. The effects of input parameters and tree properties on the accurac y of the estimated trees were evaluated. UPGMA based on product moment correlations of unstandardized characters appeared to perform best, u nder all evolutionary conditions tested. The effect of input parameter s on the accuracy was not very significant. Among the tree statistics the stemminess of the true tree appeared to be the most important esti mator of accuracy.