title: On the number of binary characters needed to recover a phylogeny using maximum parsimony.
abstract: We give an explicit construction to solve a conjecture of Mike Steel and David Penny that any phylogeny involving N taxa can be recovered unambiguously using on the order of log N binary characters and the method of maximum parsimony. Biologically, this means that homoplasy need not be a deterrent to parsimony methods. Some patterns of homoplasy are phylogenetically informative and can exponentially reduce the amount of data needed to resolve a phylogeny.
authors.affiliation: Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.
authors.forename: Juanjuan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chai
authors.forename: Elizabeth Ann
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Housworth
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D010802:Phylogeny; D016415:Sequence Alignment
chemical_list: D004247:DNA