Phylogeny of genus Scutiger (Amphibia: Megophryidae): a re-evaluation

Abstract

-A re-analysis of a published data set from Ye et al. (1992) indicates that their phylogeny for the genus Sc~rtiger does not reflect the most parsimonious explanation of the data. The consensus of the resulting trees from the original data set is a "bush" with only three resolved nodes. A re-evaluation of the character states, and their respective polarizations, resulted in alternative phylogenetic hypotheses. However, measures of homoplasy and data consistency for the re-evaluated topologies were relatively low, suggesting that little confidence could be obtained in these relationships. More data are needed to generate a defensible hypothesis of the relationships within the genus Scutiger.