Re: Reduced Consensus (Was: Afrotheria revisited)

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> So you chop Arsino[i]therium out of the generated trees, and find
> that once you do that, many of the previously differing trees are
> equivalent -- in this case, leaving only four variants.
>
> Why is this not "cheating"?  Because you are not discarding any
> information (as you would be if you simply excluded Arsinotherium
> from the analysis).  All you are doing is _not saying anything_
> about Arsino[i]therium's position.  And that's always OK.

The important thing is to remove it from the _trees_. If instead you remove it 
from the _matrix_ and run the analysis anew, that _is_ throwing away 
information, and accordingly you run the risk of getting a different topology 
-- as has happened with *Juravenator*, recently explained on this list.
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