Premium
Cladistics and the Chrysobalanaceae
Author(s) -
Chappill Jennifer A.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
taxon
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1996-8175
pISSN - 0040-0262
DOI - 10.2307/1222330
Subject(s) - cladistics , vicariance , systematics , taxon , biogeography , evolutionary biology , zoology , biology , phylogenetic tree , geography , taxonomy (biology) , ecology , phylogeography , gene , biochemistry
Summary Chappill, J. A.: Cladistics and the Chrysobalanaceae. ‐ Taxon 41: 211–223. 1992. ‐ ISSN 0040‐0262. In a recent monograph on the Chrysobalanaceae , by Prance & White, a number of analytical methods currently employed by systematists, in particular cladistic analysis and vicariance biogeography, were criticised and dismissed as not being biologically informative. The criticisms made are discussed here, in particular the problems caused by parallelism, the detection, selection and coding of characters, and the role of functional considerations in systematics. A phylogenetic analysis is performed using the data presented in the monograph and this is compared with the classification of the Chrysobalanaceae presented by Prance & White. Some possible reasons for the discrepancies between the two are discussed.