Hello Jose; I study ants and so from that point of view... We have had centuries of taxonomy based on morphological characters. Subjective intuition, Morphometrics, Numerical Taxonomy, and the rest of the analytical methods have gotten us quite a way. People have added molecular methods and so have discovered many cryptic (to the morphological view) taxa. Together, the morphology and molecular methods will have gotten us closer to understanding the actual relationships among taxa than either could have alone. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers

It depends (among many other factors) upon what do you mean by (especially molecular) "character" (single nucleotide? selected sequence? or what?).

That tendency is one out of necessity. There will always be a lot more molecular data (number of sites) available than morphological data (number of characters be they binary, discrete, or continuous data). There is a lot to unpack regarding models of character evolution too, but I think there are a lot of cases where studies based on morphology alone would estimate some fairly unresolved trees and the sequences can estimate a resolved topology with good node support (regardless of whether it is correct or not). Plus there is the issue of how old the group is you are studying - too closely related there is probably not a lot of character variation and too old the characters might not be comparable. I think defining a taxon is different from inferring a phylogeny. People are still interested in morphology, but often using the molecular data and phylogeny as tool to study the character evolution or combining the characters with the sequences to estimate divergence times or phylogeny with extinct species (fossils) too.

April Wright has written a lot about morphology in phylogenetics and has helped advanced this field. Here is a link to one of her works that provides a nice review:

Article A Systematist’s Guide to Estimating Bayesian Phylogenies Fro...

Hello Jose, I think Jim's answer above was on the right track. I study nonhuman primates. Over the last 20 years or so, it's certainly been a development in both the paleoprimatology phylogenetic literature and the primate systematics/taxonomy literature that a critical mass of researchers are taking into consideration *both* morphological and genetic data (or, these days, even genomic data) in evaluating and/or revising taxonomic classifications and phylogenetic placements. The logic for this comprehensive approach that has been articulated in the primate literature is in terms of, "Why wouldn't researchers want to have as much comparative data as possible to work with?" Let's make use of *both* morphological *and* genetic/genomic data in studying systematics and phylogeny.

The conundrum over morphological and molecular characters lies with the problem of incongruence and equivalency. This is shown in primates where molecular studies support a human-chimp sister group even though the two share hardly any morphological apomorphies, whereas morphology supports a human-orangutan sister group (about 28 synapomorphies). Which is 'right' cannot at this time be determined in any objective way. Interestingly, unambiguous hominids loot more like orangutans than chimpanzees, and also have some features otherwise characteristic of the living and fossil orangutan clade.

@Roman Bohdan Hołyński, @George Tiley, thank you for your answers.

Yes, to define a taxon and to infer a phylogeny are two different (but related) things. My point is that taxa can (and should) be established based on history, chopping trees at a convenient node. It is fairly common to have much more molecular data, but synapomorphies tend to be not so abundant. If you get (hypotethically) two trees, one based on morphology, the other on DNA sequences, and they have identical or similar support, and similar number of synapomorphies, which of them should be considered as better?

Where two trees have identical or similar support for morphology and molecules, but different a different pattern of relationship, there is currently (to my knowledge) no objective way to choose between them. One may re-examine individual apomorphies for morphology, but one cannot evaluate individual base pair matches. The latter are taken as read. Where genes of different lengths are involved there are programs to force a match by theorizing the best fit between gaps and substitutions, creating matches that do not exist in nature. The match is created by phenetics - overall similarity. While I accept that molecular results can often give useful and insightful results (as in biogeography), the whole of it remains problematic, some of it is more a matter of faith than emperical in my view.

Molecular and morphology both have owned account but molecular phylogeny can differentiate to the more closely taxa, when not possible to morphological character. So that molecular phylogeny is the best with support of morphology

Sanjeet Kumar Verma What you are saying is that molecular data is useful when it provides evidence of relationships where morphology has not (in given cases). That is fine (as a purely molecular measure in this case), but it does not resolve the issue of what to do when the morphology and molecules are in conflict. And that is not even to address the issue of what tree building algorithms are 'reliable' (some moleucularists have been rather disparaging of each other's methods - saying that only their own approach is valid whereas the others are not). And too, there is the issue of what sequence comparisons are reliable - molecular studies have a history of jumping from one solution to another. Now some say only SNiPs (if I have that right) are reliable and all the others are not. 'A pox on all their houses'

Hello all; The dispute among the people who create molecular phylogenies is familiar. The people who did(do) it using morphologies disagree among themselves too. Like I mentioned earlier, the choice of characters is often taxon specific and those choices don't seem to translate very well. It's all part of a very entertaining quest for understanding real relationships. Enjoy the quest! Jim Des Lauriers

James Des Lauriers Good points. In my experience of human-primate systematics the issue of disagreement in molecular studies is more critical in that each purports to have the holy truth that invalidates morphology. There are also critical consequences when molecular results are viewed as valid and morphology as misleading, as it invalidates any scientific meaning for the identification of fossils that can only be accessed through morphology. We see this contradiction when various specialists argue that only molecular results are informative but when it comes to fossils they promptly reverse themselves.

Hello John; Are you old enough to remember Willi Hennig? Many of the Numerical Taxonomists were pretty sure that they had developed the most superior methodology. They were trying to overcome the problems caused by choosing "significant" characters. By their logic more characters would overwhelm poor choices of a few characters. And on and on... And anyway, what were the paleontologists supposed to do? I found the feud to be pretty tiring. Cheers, Jim Des Lauriers

Yep. Numerical taxonomy was the essence of phenetics. Not sure of your point about paleontologists.

John; Well, the general discussion here started with a comparison between molecular and morphological methods. Paleontologists didn't have a choice to make...Although modern phylogenies have surely given them a leg up. Cheers, Jim Des Lauriers

Thanks for the clarification. But to my earlier point, some paleontologists have a double standard. For example, David Pilbean decided that only molecular evidence is reliable for identification of hominids, but then ignores that dictate in his paleontological studies (where morphology is magically transformed into reliable data), since he obviously he has no alternative. Its a bit like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party.

John; Indeed. At least there is molecular data for many Pleistocene sites in cooler climates. Hmmm. Jim Des Lauriers

But not for the earlier fossils crucial to the interpretation of human-great ape divergence.

John; So the primatologists are stuck with morphology. You might look up the work of Marc R Meyer as a typical example of that kind of work. Cheers, Jim Des Lauriers

James Des Lauriers - for what purpose in particular?