Arthropod phylogeny: taxonomic congruence, total evidence and conditional combination approaches to morphological and molecular data sets

Abstract

Both molecular and morphological data can be used for constructing branching diagrams indicative of phylogeny. The question ‘Is it feasible to combine different data sets into a single data matrix in phylogenetic reconstruction?’ will be discussed in this paper, using the phylogeny of extant arthropods as an illustration. Three possible answers to this question have been formulated (reviewed in Huelsenback et al, 1996) — the data should be combined either never (taxonomic congruence), or always (total evidence), or under some circumstances (conditional combination).