Chromosomal character optimization.

A method is presented to optimize chromosomal data on a cladogram. This procedure simultaneously considers variation at the nucleotide and locus levels including nucleotide substitution, insertion and deletion, locus insertions and deletion, and gene rearrangement. Locus labeling is not a requirement of the procedure and such annotation will result from the dynamic homology analysis of the chromosome data. An example of complete arthropod mtDNA sequences is presented.