The usefulness of ontogeny in interpreting morphological characters

Abstract

Future directions Ontogeny is not useful in polarizing characters for phylogenetic analysis. The usefulness of ontogeny for ordering characters has not been empirically evaluated and the justification is unclear. Ontogeny, however, can be used as a source of characters for phylogenetic analysis. Because the process of gathering comparative information on developmental mechanisms is time-consuming, however, it is essentially prohibitive if the goal is to expediently gather a sizable number of characters for a phylogenetic analysis. Furthermore, incorporating the transformational component of ontogeny into character hypotheses is not straightforward, and further research into and experimentation with methods of character coding are necessary. The formulation of ontogenetic characters can potentially be tested by means of congruence studies (e.g., Miyamoto and Fitch 1995), and this is an unexplored area in developmental morphology and systematics.