An algorithm for Morphological Phylogenetic Analysis with Inapplicable Data

Morphological data play a key role in the inference of biological relationships and evolutionary history and are essential for the interpretation of the fossil record. The hierarchical interdependence of many morphological characters, however, complicates phylogenetic analysis. In particular, many characters only apply to a subset of terminal taxa. The widely used "reductive coding" approach treats taxa in which a character is inapplicable as...