The use of distance measures, such as from DNA‐DNA hybridization, in phylogenetic reconstruction and in convex phenetics

Abstract

Abstract Tree diagrams of taxa, constructed from measures of overall distance or similarity associated with each pair and by attempting to place similar taxa on the same branch, are phenetic in that they reflect present patterns of overall similarity without specifically implicating considerations of evolutionary process in the algorithms used to construct them. Tree diagrams of taxa, constructed by algorithms explicitly based on considerations of evolutionary change processes giving rise to various discrete properties (characters) of taxa, are cladistic in that they reflect an intent to estimate directly the branching pattern of phyletic lines. In any given case, phenetic or cladistic methods or trees may or may not actually produce or represent historically correct reconstructions of relative recency of common ancestry. In the absence of homoplasy (parallelisms or reversals) cladistic methods minimizing the evolution of novel character states or maximizing the number of compatible characters will always...