Character coding for

morphology and special

character of interest
By: Cristina L. Amarante
Msc, Advanced of Systematics and Evolution
Master of Science in Biology, University of the Southern Philippines
Outline
• Define some important terms.
• How to generate the character coding of morphology and special
interest.
 Major goal of Systematics
• Infer the evolutionary tree or
phylogeny that relates all
extant and extinct species.

• Accomplished by identifying
organismal features called
characters that vary among
species
Characters ( taxonomic characters)
character
character traits
• A characteteristic or feature that
distinguishes one taxon from
another.
• Character varies from one
organism to another.
• Ex: flower color, seed shape
• Character state = one of the
various conditions or values of a
character observed across a
given group of taxa
• Ex: yellow, green, round, wrinkled
another example: leaf arrangements
Coding of characters
• the characters most suitable for computer handling are two-state ( binary or
presence absence) characters.
• However, all characters may not be two-state. They may be multistate
characters:
1. Qualitative multistate (flowers white, red, blue)
2. Quantitative multistate (leaves two, three, four, five at each node)
• Such multistate characters can be converted into two-state.
Example: flowers white or coloured; leaves four or more vs leaves less
than four Or the characters may be split (flowers white vs not white, red vs not
red,blue vs not blue; leaves two vs not two, three vs not three and so on.
Although other forms of coding could also be handled, these are often more cumbersome. One
solution is to give a separate symbol to each character-state, as explained below:

Flower colour Charactere-state

White A
Red B

Yellow C

Purple D
 Consider a simple problem of how
to code 3 plant species in which
species A has four stamens,
species B has two stamens, and
species C has 6 stamens.
Taza character code

A 4 staments 0

B 2 staments 1

C 6 staments 2
Ordering of character-states
Transformation series or morphoclines
• Multiple characters that are homologous in a
series or other form are termed to be part of
a Transformation or Character series.

• For most systematic work, of course, for

characters to be useful they must be divisible
into two or more states or expressions.

• e.g. no. segments on tarsus of beetle (1,2,3,4)

• e.g. red spot on wing of bird, present or
absent.