Midges and the electronic Ouija board The phylogeny of the Hydrobaenus group (Chironomidae, Diptera) revised

Cranston and Humphries (1988) expose Sæther's (1976) revision of the Hydrobaenus grou of enera (Chironomidae, Ditera) to the vagaries of quantitative phyletics. In the rocess they have clearly shown why at feast their method is not in accordance with the view of Hennig. In the qualitative Hennigian method the parsimony criterion is used when choosing among alternative hypotheses of explanation of single character distribution. The selection and interpretation equals the cladogenetic analysis. In neocladistic methods the parsimony criterion is usel in order to find the tree implying the fewest evolutionary ains and losses with the fewest lines. The explanation of characters enters as an afterthought. The differences between the methods are shown by analyzing a theoretical data matrix as well as by reassessment of the results obtained by Cranston and Humphries. Their data critique is met point by oint, their data matrix, which is to a large extent erroneous, is corrected, and their data reanalyzed using their and alternative outgroups. The tree topologies remain similar to each other as well as to the original qualitative analysis since there is little inside homoplasy but the changes proposed by Cranston and Humphries are shown invalid.