The choice of Recent taxa for inclusion in this dataset is based on maximizing the overlap of the morphological dataset with the 19 nuclear and 3 mitochondrial gene dataset used by [ 9].
This may be considered as preliminary evidence for the differences between the four transformation methods regarding the loss of information, even though all perform well with respect to overall treelikeness and correlation with independent morphological datasets.
This serves to remind us that the main questions surrounding the phylogeny reconstruction program begin with experimental design, for both molecular and morphological datasets.
Using the CAT model, the order Strepsiptera was recovered as sister to Coleoptera for the first time using mitochondrial sequences, in agreement with recent results based on large nuclear and morphological datasets.
Regarding the performed FDG-PET/CT studies, the acquired functional and morphological datasets were read separately.
With regard to the patterns of higher-level waterbird phylogeny recovered in the present analysis and those of Livezey and Zusi [4] and Hackett et al. [29], there generally is more agreement between the former two morphological datasets than between either of these and the latter molecular dataset.
Furthermore, lower-level relationships inferred within Suloidea exhibit varying degrees of congruence and conflict between molecular and morphological datasets.
The lengths of the branches of the morphological datasets were calculated using a Euclidean distance matrix (SAS Procedure DISTANCE SASS version 9.1.3).
To evaluate the magnitude of difference between the morphological and molecular datasets, we first examined the effect of combining molecular and morphological datasets.
Six trees resulted from combined parsimony analysis of both the molecular and morphological datasets.
