This confusion can be eliminated by recognizing that homologues are the parts of organisms and homologies are the relationships between the parts, and that the latter is a hierarchical concept rather than transformational. Using ‘reversals’ as evidence in systematics is problematic because the question, “Reversal to what?” has no straightforward answer. Because parsimony and Bayesian algorithms can obtain the same answer from the same data set is not evidence that they are Hennigian examples exist where these methods do not provide the same result from the same data. We show that optimization procedures can group using symplesiomorphy and that optimization is not always equivalent to cladistic argumentation. The assertion that phylogenetic inference algorithms are not authoritarian because results are repeatable, predictable and freely available misses the point that the authority resides in underlying algorithm models that are not cladistic. Macleay Museum and School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia The Manitoba Museum, 190 Rupert Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 0N2, Canadaĭepartment of Botany, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK
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