Does minimizing homoplasy really maximize homology? MaHo: A method for evaluating homology among most parsimonious trees Plantentuin Meise / Agentschap Plantentuin Meise
Parsimony analysis aims at finding the tree that best fits hypotheses of homology. However, parsimony does not directly maximize homology, but minimizes homoplasy. When a parsimony analysis results in more than a single most-parsimonious tree (MPT), it is shown that the number of homologous characters may vary significantly. We propose a method called MaHo to identify, among the MPTs, the tree(s) that has (have) the highest number of characters ...