Association studies, both family-based and population-based, can be powerful means of detecting disease-liability alleles. To increase the information of the test, various researchers have proposed targeting haplotypes. The larger number of haplotypes, however, relative to alleles at individual loci, could decrease power because of the additional degrees of freedom required for the test. An opt...

Interpretations of conodont anatomy and affinity continue to generate controversy. Fossilized soft-tissue evidence indicates that conodonts possessed eyes, extrinsic eye muscles, a notochord, myomeres, a differentiated tail with fin radials, possible otic capsules and possible branchial structures. Indirect evidence suggests a differentiated brain and cartilaginous head skeleton. The multi-comp...

Three-taxon statement analysis (3TA) and standard cladistic analysis (SCA) were evaluated relative to propositions of taxic homology. There are definite distinctions between complement relation homologs and paired homologs. The complement relation is discussed, relative to rooting, parsimony, and taxic propositions of homology. The complement relation, as implemented in SCA, makes sense only be...

The grass family (Poaceae) has been recognized as a unique lineage for more than 200 years, based initially on characters of inflorescence and spikelet morphology and corroborated by anatomical and other features in the latter half of the twentieth century. There have been a number of attempts to derive a phylogeny of sections of the family from structural (morphological and anatomical) charact...

An AFLP data set comprising 95 accessions from 20 species of Lactuca s.l. (sensu lato) and related genera was generated using the primer combinations E35/M48 and E35/M49. In phenetic analyses of a data subset, clustering with UPGMA based on Jaccard's similarity coefficient resulted in the highest cophenetic correlation, and the results were comparable to those of a principal coordinates analysi...

The early diversification of angiosperms in diverse ecological niches is poorly understood. Some have proposed an origin in a darkened forest habitat and others an open aquatic or near aquatic habitat. The research presented here centers on Montsechia vidalii, first recovered from lithographic limestone deposits in the Pyrenees of Spain more than 100 y ago. This fossil material has been poorly ...

Present-day associations between haplotypes at a candidate locus and phenotypes exist when phenotypically important mutations occurred at some point during the evolution of the current array of genetic variation. A cladistic statistical design can be defined that focuses power by using the evolutionary history of the candidate DNA region. This paper shows how cladistic methodology is used for t...

Remains of theropod dinosaurs are very rare in Northern Germany because the area was repeatedly submerged by a shallow epicontinental sea during the Mesozoic. Here, 80 Late Jurassic theropod teeth are described of which the majority were collected over decades from marine carbonates in nowadays abandoned and backfilled quarries of the 19th century. Eighteen different morphotypes (A-R) could be ...