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Synapomorphies Behind Shared Derived Characters: Examples from the Great Apes’ Genomic Data
- Source :
- Acta Biotheoretica. 68:357-365
- Publication Year :
- 2019
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2019.
-
Abstract
- Phylogenetic systematics (e.g., cladistics) is one of the most important analytical frameworks of modern Biology. It seems to be common knowledge that within phylogenetics, 'groups' must be defined based solely on the synapomorphies or on the "derived" characters that unite two or more taxa in a clade or monophyletic group. Thus, the idea of synapomorphy seems to be of fundamental influence and importance. Here I will show that the most common and straightforward understanding of synapomorphy as a shared derived character is not sufficient and eventually must be rejected in favor of Nelson's relational interpretation of such term. Arguing for this point and using three examples from previously published Apes' genomic matrices, I explicitly demonstrate that the relationship (Pongo (Gorilla (Homo, Pan))) with Hylobatidae as a sister taxon, may be successfully recovered by three-taxon statement analysis (3TA) and three-taxon statement average consensus analysis (3TS-ACA) even if all of the evident standard shared derived molecular characters of the relationship (Pongo (Gorilla (Homo, Pan))) with Hylobatidae as a sister taxon, have been excluded from the molecular alignments. Neither conventional Maximum Parsimony nor Maximum Likelihood or Bayesian Inference can do this in such situation. Thus, our results show that the relationship (Pongo (Gorilla (Homo, Pan))) with Hylobatidae as a sister taxon has appeared, in some way, behind standard shared derived characters: the last ones could be excluded, but the relationship remains the same.
- Subjects :
- 0301 basic medicine
Hylobatidae
Gorilla
050905 science studies
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
film.subject
03 medical and health sciences
Monophyly
biology.animal
Animals
Phylogeny
General Environmental Science
Synapomorphy
biology
Applied Mathematics
05 social sciences
Bayes Theorem
Hominidae
Genomics
General Medicine
Biological Evolution
Cladistics
Maximum parsimony
Philosophy
030104 developmental biology
Taxon
Sister group
Evolutionary biology
film
0509 other social sciences
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15728358 and 00015342
- Volume :
- 68
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Acta Biotheoretica
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....b3b878610fc200a8f161345a95f114ed