Bj. Richardson et W. Stern, TESTING PHYLOGENETIC HYPOTHESES USING AN HENNIGIAN APPROACH AND DNA-SEQUENCE DATA, Journal of zoological systematics and evolutionary research, 35(3), 1997, pp. 131-136
The assumption that maximum parsimony in a phylogenetic tree is achiev
ed by the reduction of the number of overall homoplasies to a minimum
is questioned and an alternative approach of using the most parsimonio
us distribution of taxa at each dichotomy suggested. This approach can
be put into practice using Hennigian logic to determine relationships
, DNA sequence data as the character set and standard statistical tech
niques to determine the significance to be placed on the resulting phy
logenetic tree. The logic and robustness of such an approach is descri
bed. A software package, SYNAPO, is available to assist such analyses.