Re: bat origins - the smoking gun: guidelines

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

Well -- those guidelines are guidelines for conducting a phylogenetic 
analysis. Nothing wrong with them. Except that I don't think anyone of us 
has the time to compile a phylogenetic analysis of Placentalia right now. So 
I don't quite understand what your point is.

> I say 'taxon selection is everything', but that is really true only
> after a certain minimum number of characters are employed from every
> corner of the body,  I found that 150 will get you 95% there and 225
> will provide well.

Depends on the number of taxa. To choose really trivial examples, you most 
probably won't need 150 characters to resolve a tree with three taxa, while 
150 characters are incapable of resolving a tree with 1000 taxa.

> 3. Avoid suprageneric taxa like the plague.

Molecular data matrices are almost always completely devoid of them. OTUs in 
molecular matrices are by default specimens.

> The study of the ancestry of bats has suffered from all of the above.

I disagree. The latest molecular studies (of the last few years) have very 
broad and ever-increasing taxon samples, large and ever-increasing numbers 
of characters (the latest JVP contains one with 22 genes!), and have 
specimens as OTUs.