More Taxa Are Not Necessarily Better for the Reconstruction of Ancestral Character States

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that increasing the number of taxa does not necessarily improve the accuracy of reconstructing ancestral character states, challenging common assumptions in phylogenetic analysis.

Contribution

It provides evidence that larger taxon sampling does not always lead to better ancestral state reconstructions, highlighting limitations in current phylogenetic methods.

Findings

Accuracy does not always increase with more taxa

Larger taxon sampling can sometimes decrease reconstruction accuracy

Challenges assumptions in phylogenetic analysis

Abstract

We show that the accuracy of reconstrucing an ancestral state is not an increasing function of the size of taxon sampling.