Parsimony can be related to explanatory power, either by noting that each additional requirement for a separate origin of a feature reduces the number of observed similarities that can be explained as inheritance from a common ancestor; or else by applying Popper s formula for explanatory power together with the fact that parsimony yields maximum likelihood trees under No Common Mechanism (NCM)...

Introduction This paper presents a new description of the maximum parsimony criterion. In particular, this paper demonstrates a new mathematical equivalence between Fitch parsimony as well as selection of certain types of consensus trees. The link between parsimony and consensus is intended to contribute to the discussion on parsimony as well as consensus and total evidence. A link between pars...

The latest charge against parsimony in phylogenetic inference is that it involves estimating too many parameters. The charge is derived from the fact that, when each character is allowed a branch length vector of its own (instead of the homogeneous branch lengths assumed in current likelihood models), the results for likelihood and parsimony are identical. Parsimony, however, can also be derive...

Abstract Phylogenetic (i.e., leaf-labeled) trees play a fundamental role in evolutionary research. A typical problem is to reconstruct such from data like DNA alignments (whose columns are often referred as characters), and simple optimization criterion for reconstructions maximum parsimony. It generally assumed that this works well which state changes rare. In the present manuscript, we prove ...