SUMMARY This paper presents ClassMaker, a macro of MS Excel able to classify continuous data of molecular weight data as binary (1/0) values. The output is represented by a binary matrix, which can be introduced in every software application for phylogenetics or multivariate statistics. This application is designed in order to be a link between image analysis programs and statistical or phyloge...

The traditional approach to plant molecular phylogenetics involves amplifying, sequencing and analyzing one or a few genes from many species and is conducive to broad taxon sampling. An independent approach involves chloroplast genome sequencing, providing much larger amounts of data per taxon but for a smaller number of species. In principle, the two strategies can inform each other but in pra...

Using computational biology, we have depicted the insulin phylogenetics. We have also analyzed the sequence alignment and sequence logos formation for both the insulin chain A and B for three groups namely, the mammalian group, vertebrates group and fish group. We have also analyzed cladograms of insulin for the mammalian group. In accordance with that path lengths, matrix for distance analysis...

Comparative morphology was for many years the main source of information systematic studies. As a result molecular revolution in evolutionary botanical research early 1990s, we can now rely on system classification based primarily or exclusively DNA. Nevertheless, would like to emphasise importance this era phylogenetics. We argue that comparative morphology, using latest technologies and devel...

We assessed the available morphological evidence to see if this corroborates the paraphyly in the Parachela (Tardigrada) as suggested by recent molecular data. We reconcile molecular phylogenetics with alpha morphology, focusing on claw and apophysis for the insertion of the stylet muscles (AISM). We combine molecular and morphological evidence to define six new taxa within the Parachela Schust...

Phylogenetics, the inference of evolutionary trees from molecular sequence data such as DNA, is an enterprise that yields valuable evolutionary understanding of many biological systems. Bayesian phylogenetic algorithms, which approximate a posterior distribution on trees, have become a popular if computationally expensive means of doing phylogenetics. Modern data collection technologies are qui...

Recent molecular studies investigating higher-level phylogenetics of coleoid cephalopods (octopuses, squids and cuttlefishes) have produced conflicting results. A wide range of sequence alignment and analysis methods are used in cephalopod phylogenetic studies. The present study investigated the effect of commonly used alignment and analysis methods on higher-level cephalopod phylogenetics. Two...

Wheeler WC and Pickett KM (2008. Topology-Bayes versus clade-Bayes in phylogenetic analysis. Mol Biol Evol. 25:447–453.) discuss two ways of summarizing the posterior probability distribution of a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, which they refer to as ‘‘topology-Bayes’’ and ‘‘clade-Bayes.’’ They claim that the clade-Bayes approach leads to problems such as ‘‘exaggerated clade support, inconsist...

We present a preliminary overview of our molecular phylogenetics research on the superfamily Scarabaeoidea. The molecular data consists of 28S ribosomal DNA sequences (mainly D2 and D3 expansion regions) for over 600 taxa and 18S ribosomal DNA sequences (mainly E17 to E35 expansion regions) for over 150 representative taxa within the lineages sampled. Based on our preliminary molecular phylogen...