An empirical evaluation of qualitative Hennigian analyses of protein electrophoretic data

Summary

In an empirical evaluation of a qualitative approach to construction of phylogenetic trees from protein-electrophoretic data, we have employed Hennigian cladistic principles to generate molecular trees for waterfowl, rodents, bats, and other phylads. This procedure of tree construction is described in detail. Branching structures of molecular trees produced by three different algorithms were compared against those of “model” classifications previously proposed by other systematists. In each case, the qualitative cladistic trees provided fits to model phylogenies which were strong and as good or better than those resulting from phenetic-clustering or distance-Wagner trees based on manipulation of quantitative values in matrices of genetic distance.