Re: Valid Synapomorphies or not?

["Mickey Mortimer" <Mickey_Mortimer111@msn.com>]

Steven Mahon wrote-

> Here's some more synapomorphies I found (some of them
> are iffy tho').
>lots of characters<
> More's comin' too..... I think a lot of these are
> invalid tell me what you think!

Okay, you have a lot of characters now.  Any of them are potentially valid.
Include them all, and find out which taxa have them.  Some may need
quantifying, some could be combined, some should be split, most will be
found in something outside the group they are supposed to be diagnostic of.
You sholdn't be asking if they are valid snapomorphies before you include
them, because only your results can tell you how valid they are for
diagnosing each clade.
The only reasons to reject characters before you even include them are
because all your taxa exhibit one state (unvariable), only one taxon
exhibits the derived state (apomorphy), it's correlated perfectly with size,
it's correlated perfectly with another related character (eg. large
premaxilla vs. small maxilla), you don't understand the character (it
happens to everyone), you find reasons you think it's non-homologous between
included taxa (subjective), or you think the amount of variation is minor
considering the variation caused by taphonomy and individual variation (also
subjective).
So code away and see what you find.

Mickey Mortimer