Re: Cladistic notation

["Charles Roustan" <charlesroustan@softhome.net>]

hmm.. thank you very much for your answer, I have checked out that page and
it's very informative, but what I really meant to ask is not this hmm...
kind of notation, I didn't explain myself correctly, what I meant is (I know
the question might seem a bit simple since perhaps I could just figure it
out by staring at the diagram for a few minutes, the problem is, I've stared
and stared and I still have a couple of doubts), for example, what's with
the little ' character?  and the ??  how do I translate a regular cladogram
off a textbook into something text-based like this? I supose there might be
a couple of rules, like when to include things like "[,{,},]" etc. here, for
example, in a recent message Dr. Holtz wrote something like this:

Heterodontosaurus
                Marginocephalia
                        Stegoceras
                        Ceratopsia
                                Archaeoceratops
                                Psittacosauridae
                                        Psittacosaurus
                                        Hongshanosaurus

Now, that's nice and understandable in the context of that particular
message. But sometimes things get necessarily fancier, for example, here,
David Marjanovic wrote in some message not long ago:

+--allzero outgroup
|--*Caudipteryx* (forgot to mention: composite of all species)
|--this grouping was not supported without reweighting:
|    |--Scansoriopterygidae
|    |--*Archaeopteryx*
|    |--basal Troodontidae
|    `--+--*Microraptor* (forgot to mention: composite of both species)
|       `--+--*Rahonavis*
|          `--*Shenzhouraptor*
`--+--*Sapeornis* (always here when the above grouping is present)
   `--+--*Yandangornis*
      `--+--*Confuciusornis*
         `--+--*Jibeinia*
            `--+--+--*Yanornis*
               |  |--*Yixianornis*
               |  |--*Vorona*
               |  `--+--*Patagopteryx*
               |     `--all 8 other Euornithes
{lots of snipping}

This too, I can understand and if I was asked to turn this into a regular
text-book-style cladogram I could do it, although I would ask myself the
reason for all the asterisks but I've seen that some of you add ? and {} and
_ and some of you even talk about sets and subsets and place things between
quotation marks. I've thought about it and I've come to different
conclusions, I'm sure in one of them I've gotten it right, but I think you
all use different "add-ons" in your cladograms, is it a matter of choice?
is there more than one way to make an ASCII cladogram?


----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>
To: <mike@indexdata.com>; <charlesroustan@softhome.net>
Cc: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 8:51 AM
Subject: RE: Cladistic notation


> > From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> > Mike Taylor
> > Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 9:17 AM
> >
> > In particular:
> > http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/faq/s-class/phyletic/index.html
> > explain terms like monophyletic, paraphyletic, etc., and defines
> > notation such as Clade(A+B) and Clade(A<--B).
>
> It might be useful to point out that the "standard notation" refered to on
> that website is "standard" for this list; however, it is not presently
> general usage in the technical literature.
>
> Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Vertebrate Paleontologist
> Department of Geology Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
> University of Maryland College Park Scholars
> College Park, MD  20742
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
> Phone: 301-405-4084 Email: tholtz@geol.umd.edu
> Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661 Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796
>
>
>