A laid-­back trip through the Hennigian forests (Notes from Naturalists)

Binary matrix with a priori defined plesiomorphic character‐state may be re-­written as a simple set of branching diagrams (as a “Hennigian forest”). The last might be analyzed by the average consensus method. This procedure eventually avoids the taxon-­‐character matrix from the analysis of the data. Within this framework, the criteria of the best topologies based on the character-­‐state changes are unnecessary. The solely ‘reversal’-­based groups are always appear within the average consensus topologies despite the lack of evidence from the primary data.