21 December 2012 31 2K Report

When I published my first article involving phylogenies, the editor waited until the last round of corrections to suggest that I should abolish the word "basal" in my text. In fact, whenever an OTU was the sister of another, I used the term for the OTU sister. He then explained that the word refers to the basal node that gave rise to the current OTUs, not the sister group chosen for analysis. I always thought this makes sense, however, whenever I read articles or watch lectures on phylogeny, I see the word applied to sister groups (in several cases, extant sister groups). I would like to know what the members of Research Gate think about it.

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