Showing papers by "Colin Patterson published in 1997"

The Data, the Matrix, and the Message: Comments on Begle's “Relationships of the Osmeroid Fishes”

Abstract: 2National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 20560, USA In 1991, this journal (then Systematic Zoology) included a paper on osmeroid fishes (smelts and their relatives) and the use of reductive characters in phylogenetic analysis (Begle, 1991). That study was based on a matrix of 84 characters coded in 19 taxa and a hypothetical ancestor. Thirteen of the taxa were genera, and the other six were collective at higher levels. In a revision of the systematics of osmeroids and other lower euteleostean fishes (Johnson and Patterson, 1996), we had to pay close attention to Begle's paper. It was immediately obvious that his matrix contained many mistakes, and we eventually found it necessary to check each entry against specimens. Begle's matrix is reproduced in Appendix 1 with our corrected coding and a summary of differences between the two versions. A detailed commentary was published elsewhere (Johnson and Patterson, 1996), and an abbreviated commentary on some characters is provided in Appendix 2.