Stratocladistics Explained

Stratocladistics is a technique in phylogenetics of making phylogenetic inferences using both geological and morphobiological data. It follows many of the same rules as cladistics, using Bayesian logic to quantify how good a phylogenetic hypothesis is in terms of debt and parsimony. However, in addition to the morphological debt that is used to determine phylogenetic dissimilarities in cladistics, there is also stratigraphic debt which adds the dimension of time to the equation.Although stratocladistics has been viewed with suspicion by some workers, it represents a total evidence approach that has some advantages over traditional cladistic approaches. For example, stratocladistics has been shown to outperform simple parsimony in tests based on simulated data and stratocladistics has better resolution than simple cladistics, with fewer equally parsimonious trees than in a basic cladistic analysis.^[1]

Further reading

• Fox . D. L. . Fisher . D. C. . Leighton . L. R. . 10.1126/science.284.5421.1816 . Reconstructing Phylogeny with and without Temporal Data . Science . 284 . 5421 . 1816–1819 . 1999 . 10364549.
• Clyde . W. C. . Fisher . D. C. . Comparing the Fit of Stratigraphic and Morphologic Data in Phylogenetic Analysis . Paleobiology . 23 . 1 . 1–19 . 10.1017/S0094837300016614. 1997 .
• Lazarus . D. B. . Prothero . D. R. . The Role of Stratigraphic and Morphologic Data in Phylogeny . Journal of Paleontology . 58 . 1 . 163–172 . 1984 .
• Huelsenbeck . J. H. . Rannala . B. . Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Phylogeny Using Stratigraphic Data . Paleobiology . 23 . 2 . 174–180 . 1997 .

External links

Web site: StrataPhy. - software for stratocladistic reconstructions

Notes and References

1. Fisher . D. C. . 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.38.091206.095752 . Stratocladistics: Integrating Temporal Data and Character Data in Phylogenetic Inference . Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics . 39 . 365–385 . 2008 .