RE: Several New Papers

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sun, 03 Dec 2006 09:27:10 +0100 (CET)
Von: evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>

> Charadriiformes was a consequence of believing
> graculavids were for real,

AFAIK the flamingo-charadriiform link was proposed based on a) the long legs 
and b) the interpretation of *Juncitarsus* as a "flamingo-shorebird mosaic".

> > > what does one, with the benefit of
> > > hindsight, expect from fowl which hang out with
> > > geese (and pelicans...)
>
> http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2005.0427
> I was dead wrong, as were most apparently... and more.
> No "flamingo/duck" lice on the magpie goose.

Impressive!

> > > > The one in
> > > > preparation by Livezey & Zusi will be the first.
>
> Anything out on what the resolution will be yet?

It has been said onlist that they don't find Metaves and Coronaves, at least 
not yet.

> The cool thing is: you learn about the actual
> evolutionary patterns. I read the (BMC Evol?) paper on
> woodcreepers some time ago - turns out that bills,
> formerly used in phylogenetic studies, are wildly
> autapomorphic. But some fine color patterns (stuff
> like black streaks vs black droplets w/white spots)
> are good indicators of relationship. Huh.

Cool.

Reinforces the principle that all characters should be given the same weight in 
morphological phylogenetic analyses, at least at first...!

> > There has been "much
> > effort on the part of avian" phylogeneticists, but
> > by far not enough, considering the sheer size of the
> > problem.
>
> Let's talk again in 12 months ;-)

Yes.

> > Be careful with branch lengths. Those depend to a
> > surprising degree on the _method_.
>
> The visual aspect is a very very big and bad problem.
> I wondered: if you took eg bootstrap values and
> defined 100 = #000000 (black) and 0 = #FFFFFF (white),
> it might help to visualize trees: lineages fade away
> as they become more uncertain.

Good idea, but I was not talking about the visual impression, but about branch 
lengths expressed in numbers (as an absolute number of character state changes 
in parsimony, as a number per site in likelihood).
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