Re: Flamingos and grebes are sistergroups, even if you dislike molecules!

[ekaterina A <a_ekaterina@yahoo.com>]

> Perhaps misalignment, but definitely not
> imagination! :-)

No, the problem is they are not using large protein
sets for the phylogeny. 

> All molecular papers I know do support it... if they
> are younger than 1997
> or so; before that the nematodes were attracted to
> the base of

Not at all. The parsimony analysis based on shared
protein domain architectures, shared proteins, tree
using larger protein dataset like concatenated
alignments of ribsomal proteins, RNA polymerase etc do
not support this. I have experimented with these
myself. It is merely that there has been a vocal
subsection of biologists advocating this without being
conversant with the whole genome analysis. Statistical
tests like KH SH AU etc do not support Ecdysozoa

> > A monophyletic arthropod-vertebrate
> > clade is the most likely scenario.

What I meant was the following  case:

---------- N
 |   |____ A
 |________ V

is a weaker hypothesis than

------------V
  |   |_____A
  |_________N

trees rooted with respect an outgroups; and
N=nematodes A=arthropods V=vertebrates

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