Character

Abstract

Character analysis has long been recognized as a distinct procedure that is prior to tree reconstruction. Prior analysis, only similarities and differences in features exist among the taxa being compared. There are many ways to code different manifestations of the same thing. The central questions of character analysis are “what is a character?”, “what is a character state?” “how do we delimite characters and characters states?”. After characters and states have been determined, decisions have to be made as to how relate the characters states to each other and what transformations are permitted between characters states. Different systematists perceive and defi ne character states in different way and there are different approaches to character coding. Alternative methods of scoring the same features (morphological or molecular) in the data matrix have effects on the resultant topology.