-The Caminalcules are a group of "organisms" generated artificially according to principles believed to resemble those operating in real organisms. A reanalysis of an earlier data matrix of the Caminalcules revealed some inconsistencies and errors which necessitated recoding of some characters. The resulting differences with earlier results are minor. The images of all 77 Caminalcules are featu...

Sir, This correspondence attempts to clarify two important issues relevant to the DNA barcoding initiative raised in Waugh’s otherwise, cogent and useful review. The first issue concerns the way that Waugh presents the analytic approach to DNA-barcoding data, and the second involves a broader issue with respect to the role of DNA barcoding in modern biology. Both issues are of great importance ...

The phylogenetic placement of the monotypic crab plover Dromasardeola (Aves, Charadriiformes) remains controversial. Phylogenetic analysis of anatomical and behavioral traits using phenetic and cladistic methods of tree inference have resulted in conflicting tree topologies, suggesting a close association of Dromas to members of different suborders and lineages within Charadriiformes. Here, we ...

The deepest phylogenetic division in the universal tree (vertical line in Figure 1) is that separating bacteria from the clade comprising archaea and eukaryotes. The prokaryote–eukaryote split (horizontal line in Figure 1), originally delineated on the basis of differences between (eu)bacterial and eukaryotic cellular ultrastructure, is a phenetic dichotomy (see Doolittle, 1996, and references ...

The present study has attempted to explore the relationship among three Slovakian Haban populations with other Central European populations using finger ridge-count data. A multivariate approach to the analysis of finger-ridge count data allows for the study of population relationships using R-matrix calculations. Historical and ethnographic evidence suggests that the Haban populations have rem...