ABSTRACT
In cladistics, grouping of taxa is done by using phylogenetically informative characters, and shared derived character states. The challenges faced during cladistic analysis are due to polymorphic and quantitative characters. Polymorphic characters are those which have more than one character state. The challenge is to decide the character that can be used for the cladistic analysis. In cladistic analysis, evolutionary assumption is assumed that all taxa belong to a monophyletic group and that the changes in different lineages occur over time. Characters are attributes referring to form, structure and behaviour of an organism. Similar to selecting the character, the correct coding of the character states is also a critical step in cladistics. Once the characters and character states are chosen and their homologies ascertained, the character states are arranged in a sequential manner based on past evolutionary changes. Making use of the data matrix, a cladogram is constructed that will depict the phylogenetic relationships among the taxa.
