A statistical approach to the evaluation of characters to estimate evolutionary relationships among the species of the aquatic subterranean genus, Iberobathynella (Crustacea, Syncarida)

Abstract

The 13 known species of the genus Iberobathynella were studied. Twenty-six characters with usually two or three states were revealed to have low within-species variability but show clear differences among some species. These characters were hypothesized to have states convex on the branching pattern of the phylogenetic lines that gave rise to these 13 species (i.e. be uniquely derived). Each pair of these hypotheses was tested for logical compatibility; then, for each character, a new character was created by choosing equiprobably one of the possible permutations of the 13 species to rename the species in each state. Characters created in this random way would have convex states only by chance, not by evolution. This random character was tested with each of the remaining 25 for logical compatibility as hypotheses of convexity. For each character, one thousand such random characters were created and tested. Sixteen observed characters were compatible with more other observed characters than 90% of their randomly generated counterparts, and so were considered plausibly non-random. They were used to speculate on branching patterns of the phylogenetic lines among the 13 species.