Table 6

A simple NEXUS file (Maddison et al. 1997) containing the data for the example in Figure 5. The file consists of blocks, each holding a single kind of information, delimited by the markers BEGIN block_name; and END;. The taxa block lists the manuscripts appearing in the file. The characters block specifies the number of characters and the format in which readings are coded, listing the coded characters in the MATRIX section. The first three characters are parsimony-informative because each state ('a' and 'b') occurs in at least two manuscripts. The last two characters are parsimony-uninformative, because in each case the state 'b' only occurs in one manuscript.

#NEXUS
BEGIN taxa;
      DIMENSIONS NTAX=4;
      TAXLABELS
      [1]   MS_1
      [2]   MS_2
      [3]   MS_3
      [4]   MS_4
;
END;

BEGIN characters;
      DIMENSIONS nchar=5;
      FORMAT
            datatype=standard
            symbols="a b"
            labels
      ;
      MATRIX
            MS_1   aaaba
            MS_2   abaaa
            MS_3   bbbaa
            MS_4   babab
      ;
END;