Morphological data are often the only sort available.
Whereas morphological data are often regarded as intrinsically inferior to molecular characters, more thorough analyses do not confirm that view [ 57].
Firstly, DNA data facilitate the detection of cryptic species because they provide more direct evidence of population genetic processes like interbreeding than do morphological data, and often with greater precision.
Morphological data have most often excluded the genus Sotalia Gray, 1866 from this subfamily (but see Kasuya [ 19]) in concordance with the mtDNA cytochrome b phylogeny of LeDuc et al. [ 3], but a recent molecular analysis suggested the genus should be included [ 20].
Despite a wealth of morphological data confirming that there is often remarkable divergence in the early and late embryos of species from the same phylum, it is not yet known to what extent gene expression evolution, which has a central role in the elaboration of different animal forms, underpins the morphological hourglass pattern.
Nonparametric bootstrapping is often difficult with morphological data due to the limited size of the dataset [ 58]; however, bootstrapping with 50% resampling was performed.
This phylogenetic organization is original as Gnetales are more often linked to Angiosperms by morphological data [ 43- 47] (see Doyle [ 48] for review).
Some authors hold the opinion that morphological data are problematic in reconstructing phylogenetic trees because morphology is frequently convergent and therefore often misleading [ 37, 38].
In the absence of a molecular species concept, most microbial eukaryotic systematics has been based on morphological data to delineate species, and the characters used have often been restricted to features that are visible with light microscopy.
Our aim is to demonstrate application to delimit species using the sorts of mixed mode data often found in 'traditional' taxonomic problems, especially in a palaeontological context when the morphological species concept is fundamental.
