title: Relative quality of different systematic datasets for cetartiodactyl mammals: assessments within a combined analysis framework.
abstract: High congruence, support, stability, resolution and decisiveness are seen as positive attributes by many systematists. Within a cladistic context, the consistency index, the retention index, branch support, data decisiveness, the number of nodes resolved in a strict consensus tree and the incongruence length difference are direct measures of these qualities. Phylogenetic analyses of 29 datasets for cetartiodactyl mammals show that for a particular character partition, these indices can vary radically in separate versus combined analysis of datasets. The quality of any single dataset is of little importance in comparison to a thorough sampling of the available character space.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gatesy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001188:Artiodactyla / Q000145:classification*; D010802:Phylogeny