phylogenetic tree is our preferred hypothesis based on the principle of parsimony.
phylogenetic tree is our preferred hypothesis based on the principle of parsimony.
based on the principle of parsimony which tree is our preferred hypothesis?
phylogenetic tree
it is among the cladists that occam's razor is to be found, although their term for it is "cladistic parsimony". cladistic parsimony (or maximum parsimony) is a method of phylogenetic inference in the construction of types of phylogenetic trees (more specifically, cladograms). cladograms are branching, tree-like structures used to represent hypotheses of relative degree of relationship, based on shared, derived character states. cladistic parsimony is used to select as the preferred hypothesis of relationships the cladogram that requires the fewest implied character state transformations. critics of the cladistic approach often observe that for some types of tree, parsimony consistently produces the wrong results, regardless of how much data is collected (this is called statistical inconsistency, or long branch attraction). however, this criticism is also potentially true for any type of phylogenetic inference, unless the model used to estimate the tree reflects the way that evolution actually happened. because this information is not empirically accessible, the criticism of statistical inconsistency against parsimony holds no force. for a book-length treatment of cladistic parsimony, see elliott sober's "reconstructing the past: parsimony, evolution, and inference" (1988). for a discussion of both uses of occam's razor in biology, see sober's article "let's razor ockham's razor" (1990).
occam's razor
a maximum parsimony analysis runs in a very straightforward fashion. trees are scored according to the degree to which they imply a parsimonious distribution of the character data. the most parsimonious tree for the dataset represents the preferred hypothesis of relationships among the taxa in the analysis.
maximum parsimony (phylogenetics)