Software dependent phenetic relationships of non-nodulating African species ofAcacia

The phenetic analysis of non-nodulatingAcacia species by Harrier et al. (1997) was repeated to illustrate how different computer programs may generate alternative UPGMA trees for the very same data, even in the absence of data input order effects (ties). For example, all Harrier et al.'s UPGMA dendrograms produced by software from the Scottish Agricultural Statistics Service differed from those obtained by the packages NTSYS and MVSP87. Particularly, the positions ofA. albida, A. rovumae, andA. pentagona, as well as the relationships betweenDiacanthae andTriacanthae were affected by this phenomenon. Hence, whenever clustering techniques are used, care should be taken to consider possible software-dependent caveats and artefacts. Nevertheless, all programs provided clusterings that largely coincided with the subgeneric and sectional groupings proposed by Vassal (1972) although the positions of some species varied depending on whether morphological or molecular data were considered (e.g.A. albida andA. rovumae).