Abstract
Divergence of character states among OTU’s may arise from both random and non-random factors. If characters change states or values at random over evolutionary time, then historical accident is the primary determinant of the character state distributions among OTU’s. Such distributions can in principle be used to reconstruct phylogenies (Wiley, 1981). If characters are subject to nonrandom or ecological factors which act rapidly over a short time scale (natural selection, gene flow, epistasis, etc.), then the resulting parallelisms and convergences will obscure the effects of history (Endler, 1982a,b). Clearly, both history and current ecology will contribute to the geographical distribution of character states observed among OTU’s:
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