In article <4hv0ah$20r at News.Dal.Ca>, Arlin Stoltzfus <arlin at is.dal.ca> wrote:
> By what grounds would it be necessary to claim that the "tree of
> life is rooted with plant mtDNA" in order to argue that C-to-U
> pan-editing is ancient? Isn't this tantamount to assuming
> that there is no homoplasy?
[...]
That is all I meant. It would require invoking an unnecessary homoplasy
to explain it as an ancient trait. That is unparsimonious in this sense,
compared with explaining it as an autapomorphy. Certainly, nature is
not always parsimonious.
--
Doug Eernisse <DEernisse at fullerton.edu>
Dept. Biological Science MH282
California State University
Fullerton, CA 92634
http://biology.fullerton.edu/people/faculty/doug-eernisse
