Plotting Frequency Distributions of Phylogenetic Groupings Found Among Sets of Most Parsimonious Trees

Many data sets used in phylogenetic analysis yield more than one most parsimonious tree (1lPT).Indeed, when a large number of taxa are examined and multistate unordered characters are used, several thousand MPTs can be produced.The nature and extent ofthe variation in tree structure among MPTs is often difficult to summarize.This note is intended to bring attention to a graphical method that makes the task less cumbersome.The method is also proposed as a useful pedagogical tool.