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A Concoction Pipeline for Generating Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs) Among Riparian and Aquatic Beetles

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Clade support measures and their adequacy.

Taran Grant¹, Arnold G Kluge²

¹Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Av. Ipiranga 6681, 90619-900, Brazil.

Cladistics : the International Journal of the Willi Hennig Society

|December 11, 2021

Summary

Phylogenetic support measures are evaluated for objectivity. Objective support quantifies relative hypothesis strength as a function of explanatory power, unlike statistical measures.

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Area of Science:

Phylogenetic analysis
Systematics
Evolutionary biology

Background:

Clade support evaluation is crucial in phylogenetics, alongside hypothesis optimality.
Support and optimality are empirical claims about hypothesis strength relative to evidence.
Optimality measures absolute hypothesis strength, while support measures relative strength.

Discussion:

Objective support measures must quantify support as a function of explanatory power.
Goodman-Bremer support and ratio of explanatory power (REP) support are adequate objective measures.
Statistical support measures (e.g., likelihood ratio, posterior probability) are internally consistent but not objective.

Key Insights:

Support (S) and optimality (O) are directly proportional: S(h | e,b) ∝ O(h | e,b).
Objective support requires quantifying support based on explanatory power.
Many common support measures (e.g., bootstrap, MCMC clade frequencies) are inadequate.

Outlook:

Developing and validating objective phylogenetic support measures is essential.
Future research should focus on integrating explanatory power into support calculations.
Clarifying the relationship between support and optimality advances phylogenetic inference.