Taxon sampling and seed plant phylogeny

We investigated the effects of taxon sampling on phylogenetic inference by exchanging terminals in two sizes of rbcL matrices for seed plants, applying parsimony and bayesian analyses to ten 38-taxon matrices and ten 80-taxon matrices. In comparing tree topologies we concentrated on the position of the Gnetales, an important group whose placement has long been disputed. With either method, trees obtained from different taxon samples could be mutually contradictory and even disagree on groups that seemed strongly supported. Adding terminals improved the consistency of results for unweighted parsimony, but not for parsimony with third positions excluded and not for bayesian analysis, particularly when the general time-reversible model was employed. This suggests that attempting to resolve deep relationships using only a few taxa can lead to spurious conclusions, groupings unlikely to be repeatable with different taxon samplings or larger data sets. The effect of taxon sampling has not generally been recognized, and phylogenetic studies of seed plants have often been based on few taxa. Such insufficient sampling may help explain the variety of phylogenetic hypotheses for seed plants proposed in recent years. We recommend that restricted data sets such as single-gene subsets of multigene studies should be reanalyzed with alternative selections of terminals to assess topological consistency. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.