Arlin Stoltzfus wrote:
>> than nucleotide characters. One should reduce the weight of indels
> to the extent that there is greater variation in mutation rates
> for different specific indels than in mutation rates for different
> specific nucleotide substitutions.
I shouldn't have said it that way. What is important is the
variance in the rates of particular types of character transitions
(in this case, different types of indels vs. different types of
nucleotide transitions). If all the character transitions are
neutral then (by the simple math of the neutral theory) the
rates of change are numerically equal to mutation
rates, which is why I was talking about variance in mutation
rates. Instead, I should be talking about rates of character
change, but the basic argument would be the same, I expect.
Arlin
--
Arlin Stoltzfus, Ph.D. (arlin at is.dal.ca)
Department of Biochemistry, Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4H7 CANADA
phone: 902-494-2968 fax: 902-494-1355
