© 2007 Society of Systematic Biologists
Investigating Stagnation in Morphological Phylogenetics Using Consensus Data
Edited by Michael Lee: Associate Editors
1 Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum London, SW7 5BD, UK E-mail: simon.harris@ncl.ac.uk (S.R.H)
2 School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol Bristol, BS8 1RJ, UK
3 School of Biology and Psychology, Division of Biology, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
4 Bioinformatics Laboratory, The National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
Received October 13, 2005; Revised February 21, 2006; Accepted June 6, 2006
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"Such debates are often a result of large gaps in the fossil record, rapid diversification within a lineage or highly derived morphologies within extant lineages that make phylogeny reconstruction difficult" (Meyer and Zardoya, 2003).
Rieppel and Kearney (2002) have recently called attention to the lack of progress in resolving several high-profile disagreements in vertebrate phylogeny that, because of the crucial importance of fossil taxa, depend upon the interpretation of morphological data. Perhaps the best-known example concerns the phylogenetic placement of Testudines (turtles) within Amniota. Most textbooks assert that turtles lie outside a clade including all other extant reptiles because they lack temporal fenestrae in their skull (the presumed plesiomorphic, anapsid condition). However, there has long been dissent based on the possibility that, like all other extant reptiles, turtles are diapsids, and that they have secondarily lost the two fenestrae for which this group is named (e.g., Goodrich, 1916
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Appendix. Varieties of Consensus Data |
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Strict Consensus
Majority-Rule Consensus
Semistrict Consensus
Other Possibilities
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