The NATO Advanced Study Institute on Numerical Taxonomy took place on the 4th - 16th of July, 1982, at the Kur- und Kongresshotel Residenz in Bad Windsheim, Federal Republic of Germany. This volume is the proceedings of that meeting, and contains papers by over two-thirds of the participants in the Institute. Numerical taxonomy has been attracting increased attention from systematists and evolutionary biologists. It is an area which has been marked by debate and conflict, sometimes bitter. Happily, this meeting took place in an atmosphere of "GemUtlichkeit", though scarcely of unanimity. I believe that these papers will show that there is an increased understanding by each taxonomic school of each others' positions. This augurs a period in which the debates become more concrete and specific. Let us hope that they take place in a scientific atmosphere which has occasionally been lacking in the past. Since the order of presentation of papers in the meeting was affected by time constraints, I have taken the liberty of rearranging them into a more coherent subject ordering. The first group of papers, taken from the opening and closing days of the meeting, debate philosophies of classification. The next two sections have papers on congruence, clustering and ordination. A notable concern of these participants is the comparison and testing of classifications. This has been missing from many previous discussions of numerical classification.

Klappentext

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Numerical Taxonomy Held in Bad Windsheim, Germany, July 4-16, 1982

Inhalt
Approaches to Classification.- The significance of phylogenetic classifications for systematic and evolutionary biology.- The value of natural classification.- Philosophy and method in biological classification.- The phenetics-cladistics controversy: a personal view.- Parsimony and paraphyly.- The future of numerical methods in plant systematics: a personal prospect.- A practical view of numerical taxonomy or should I be a pheneticist or a cladist?.- Taxa, taxonomists, and taxonomy.- Taxonomic Congruence.- Taxonomic congruence in the Caminalcules.- Taxonomic congruence a reanalysis.- A simulation model for numerical taxonomic methods.- Taxonomic congruence: a brief discussion..- Algorithms optimizing the taxonomic information of classifications.- Prediction = Parsimony or Partitions?.- Information content and most parsimonious trees.- Numerical taxonomic evaluation of the taxonomic value of character suites in Tillandsia L.- Instability and incongruence in the brooms and gorses (Leguminosae subtribe Genistinae).- A view of some consensus methods for trees.- Distributions of distances between pairs of classifications.- Sampling distribution of consensus indices when all bifurcating trees are equally likely.- Clustering and Ordination.- Comparing classifications.- Cluster validity by concurrent chaining.- Characteristics of four external criterion measures.- Comparison of classifications with the data from which they are derived.- Sur la signification des classes issues d'une classification automatique de donnees.- Significance tests for clusters: overview and comments.- Inference procedures for the evaluation and comparison of proximity matrices.- Representing proximities data by discrete, continuous, or hybrid models.- Hierarchical cluster methods as maximumlikelihood estimators.- The occurrence of multiple UPGMA phenograms.- Reconstructing Phylogenies.- Wagner trees in theory and practice.- The causes of character incompatibility.- The uniquely derived concept as a basis for character compatibility analyses.- Theoretical and computational considerations of the compatibility of qualitative taxonomic characters.- Methods for inferring phylogenies: a statistical view.- A divisive algorithm for estimating parsimonious trees.- Relationships between transformation series and some numerical cladistic methods at the infraspecific level, when genealogies are known.- Analyzing Morphological Variation.- Some genetic aspects of morphometric variation.- Choice of descriptors in numerical taxonomy for static and dynamic shape analysis and recognition in biology.- A new coding procedure for morphometric data with an example from periodical cicada wing veins.- A quick method for making multistate characters out of continuous measurements.- Geographic Variation.- Analyzing character variation in geographic space.- A review of the numerical methods for recognizing and analysing racial differentiation.- Testing causal hypotheses of geographical variation.- Geographic variation in human gene frequencies.- Treeness tests and the problem of variable evolutionary rates.- Phylogenetic analysis of range expansion in the grass snake: reticulate evolution: primary and secondary contact zones.- Correspondence between geographic proximity and phenetic similarity among pinus brutia Ten. populations in southern Turkey.- Geographic distribution, polyploidy and pattern of flavonoids in Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud.- Biochemical Applications.- Molecular evolution of mammalian pancreatic ribonucleases.- Quantitative comparison of protein chain folds.- An approach to the taxonomy of malaria parasites on the basis of protein structures: adenylate kinase and glutathione reductase as examples.- Evolutionary relations of sulfate reducers.- Methods of flavonoid data analysis.- Phylogeny of Euphorbia interpreted from sterol composition of latex.- General Applications.- Numerical ecology: developments and recent trends.- Evolutionary trees and numerical taxonomy in studies of Tillandsia (Bromeliaceae).- Application of numerical techniques to the systematics of Toxorhynchites (Diptera: Culicidae).- A chromosome inversion pathway for some Chironomus species and two new techniques for analyzing similarity functions.- Multivariate analysis of variability associated with source of origin in the bacterium Simonsiella.- Reflections on the classifications of Yponomeuta (Yponomeutidae, Lepidoptera) and numerical taxonomic procedure.- A phenetic study of the genus Xylocopa (Hym.-Apoidea).- Numerical taxonomy of the genus Chaetomium Kze.- A numerical taxonomic study on Carthamus L. taxa in Turkey.- Multivariate analysis of the polyploid complex Valeriana officinalis (preliminary report).- Application of numerical taxonomic techniques to the study of behavior.- Numerical taxonomy of some Portuguese wines.- Computers in Systematics.- Image analysis.- Computers in systematics: one perspective.- Automated measurement with portable microcomputers.- The Vicieae database project: experimental uses of a monographic taxonomic database for species of vetch and pea.- List of Participants.