Re: Reduced Consensus (Was: Afrotheria revisited)

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Mike Taylor wrote:

> (That said, I would still argue that cricket is superior as it's the
> only game whose laws include rules about tea-breaks.)

Ahhh.... given current events, perhaps this is not the best time to champion 
the virtues of cricket.  ;-)

(Though I agree with your sentiments vis-a-vis cricket vs baseball.)

Mickey Mortimer wrote:

> So really it's not too unlikely.  Especially since tons of relevent taxa 
> weren't included.  How about > some lipotyphlans, bats, carnivorimorphs, 
> afrosoricans, meridungulates, etc.?

You're asking for a whole phylogeny of placentals in that case.  For 
example, if you include carnivoramorphs, then you have to include 
'creodonts'... and so on.

> Really, the entire tree's poorly supported.  Bootstrapping results in 95% 
> support for Rhynchocyon+Myohyrax, and 68% for Macroscelidea.  71% for 
> Haplomylus+Macroscelidea and 66% for the clade of everything except 
> Protungulatum and Mithrandir.  Every other node is
> supported by <50%.

Is this partly the consequence of low taxon sampling?  Would adding more 
taxa for certain clades help 'firm up' the bootstrap support for some of the 
clades?  In the analysis above, some very speciose clades (like Proboscidea, 
Perissodactyla, or Artiodactyla) are each represented by only one (fairly 
basal) taxon.

And I wonder what pulled _Ectocion_ and _Arsinoitherium_ together...?

Cheers

Tim

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