A Phylogenetic Analysis of the Caminalcules. I. the Data Base

Abstract

The Caminalcules are a group of “organisms” generated artificially according to principles believed to resemble those operating in real organisms. A reanalysis of an earlier data matrix of the Caminalcules revealed some inconsistencies and errors which necessitated recoding of some characters. The resulting differences with earlier results are minor. The images of all 77 Caminalcules are featured, those of the 48 fossil species for the first time. The characters of the Caminalcules are defined and a data matrix is furnished for all Recent and fossil species.A new phenetic standard is proposed for the Caminalcules which divides them into five “genera.” The true cladogram is revealed for the first time. Recent Caminalcules have evolved over 19 time periods. Five branches correspond to the phenetic genera but originate at greatly differing time periods. Four lines terminate in fossils.A series of measures for quantifying evolutionary change is defined, including measures for homoplasy, parallelism, and reversal. A survey is made of these measures and of other statistics of relevance to systematics for 19 data sets from the numerical taxonomic literature. The Caminalcules turn out to be compatible to data sets on real organisms with respect to all these measures, as well as with respect to evolutionary rates and species longevities. Thus, questions raised by an analysis of the Caminalcules should be of interest to systematists concerned with the analysis of data sets on real organisms.