Data from: Cladistic analysis of the Paleozoic bryozoan family Monticuliporidae and Mesotrypidae

A set of 127 binary and multistate characters, weighted by the number of derived character states, degree of covariation, and level of homoplasy, was used in a cladistic analysis of type species representing12 genera previously assigned to families Monticuliporidae and Mesotrypidae. The most parsimonious tree consisted of a 10-genus monophyletic crown group with the remaining two genera forming a basal paraphyletic stem group. The composition of the monticuliporid crown group is broadly similar to two earlier classifications (Astrova 1978; Marintsch 1998) while stem group membership matches that of Astrova's (1965, 1978) family Mesotrypidae. Phenetic groupings, based on overall morphological similarity, have memberships that are similar to those of clades but provide no means of determining the polarity of evolutionary relationships either within or between them. Finally, only the observed stratigraphic ranges of the type species of genera provide a statistically significant match with cladistic branching sequence, perhaps because current composite generic ranges reflect the mixing of species belonging to different genera. Based on cladogram topology, we propose the placement of all 12 genera into a single family Monticuliporidae

APPENDIX 3

Apomorphy listing, by cladogram node, for the heuristic analysis that was reweighted by maximum value of the rescaled consistency index (RC). RC ranges between 0.0 and 1.0 and is a (directly) proportional measure of a character’s fit to a tree. Triangles (►) indicate changes occurring in every possible tree reconstruction, whereas arrows (→) indicate changes in this reweighted analysis, and possibly in others, but not in all analyses

APPENDIX 2

Character states for 127 morphologic characters used in cladistics analysis. Characters, and character states, are defined in Appendix 1. Question marks reflect uncertain character state codes. The genus Goryunovia was utilized as an outgroup

APPENDIX 1

The 127 coded characters used in cladistic analyses of genera assigned to families Monticuliporidae and Mesotrypidae. These characters were cladistically informative (i.e., were synapomorphic) having states shared by in-group genera. This is a partial listing of 267 characters developed from the following sources (R. L. Anstey, personal communication): Anstey (1978), Anstey (1990), Anstey and Pachut 1995 (Appendices A and B), Anstey and Perry (1970, 1973), Blake and Snyder (1987), Corneliussen and Perry (1973), Cuffey and Blake (1991), Hageman (1991), Hickey (1988), Key (1990), McKinney (1977, 2000), Pachut and Anstey (1984), Pachut, Anstey, and Horowitz (1994), Prezbindowski and Anstey (1978), Spearing (1998), Tang and Cuffey (1998), and Taylor and Weedon (2000). Characters that could not be evaluated within a genus were coded using a question mark