Cladistics
Originally
conceived, if only in essence, by Willi Hennig in a book published in
1950, cladistics did not flourish until its translation into English
in 1966 (Lewin 1997). Today, cladistics is the most popular method for
constructing phylogenies not only from morphological data but also from
molecular. Unlike phenetics,
cladistics is specifically aimed at reconstructing evolutionary histories.
By
categorising shared-derived characters (synapomorphies),
cladists attempt to identify sister groups. A shared-derived character
is a trait that is shared by two groups (making them sister groups)
but not by a distant common ancestor. Traits shared with a distant common
ancestor are termed primitive, and are to be avoided in cladistics.
Taxa with the most synapomorhpies are deemed to have diverged most recently,
followed by the taxon with the next most synapomorphies, and so on.
Cladistics
can be applied to many different levels of taxonomy, with sister groups
being species, genera, orders, etc. To know whether a trait is primitive
or derived an outgroup comparison is used. This involves taking a species
or group that is distantly related to the species in question, and making
comparisons of characters under examination. For example, to discern
whether the tabulars (a pair of bones in the occipital region of the
skull) in golden moles (Chrysochloridae)
are a shared-derived character only of this family, we examine other
families of Insectivora for their presence. The presence of tabulars
in any other insectivoran family would indicate that it is not a shared-derived
character for the golden moles, but is a primitive feature shared by
a common ancestor of the families. In this example, the tabular bones
of chrysochlorids are indeed a shared derived character unique to that
family.
This
methodology leads cladists to claim objectivity for cladistics because
it removes subjective judgement of relationships based on similarity.
As with phenetics, the process of cladistics
involves a character matrix. Unlike phenetics, the cladogram
that is based on the matrix predicts explicit phylogenetic reconstruction.
Cladistics works well at higher taxonomic levels. At lower levels however,
it often has to be interpreted statistically since the actual primitive
state of a character is unknown. There are such a vast number of possible
trees available, even when only considering a handful of species. For
example, for 50 species there are 2.8 x 10 to the power of 74, possible
trees, which is 10,000 times as many trees as there are atoms in the
universe (Lewin 1997). Analytical methods are therefore required to
select the tree that involves the smallest number of mutations to produce
the observed diversity of traits. In other words, the simplest solution
is reached, in the hope that it is the most likely. This is known as
maximum parsimony.