Ferraris (1988). However, at no place in his text did Ferraris discuss how he arrived 

 at the topology of the cladogram presented in Fig. 33; thus, one is left to assume that 

 he used manual argumentation to produce his tree(s), and that he had some rational 

 justification for choosing the topology he did. In any case, ahemate arrangements 

 of branches would primarily involve genera outside of the lineage that includes the 

 ageneiosid clade. ' ' r' - - f ^ 



I find the number of unresolved polychotomies in Ferraris' (1988) analysis 

 especially disturbing, at least in terms of his proposal to rearrange the prevaihng 

 family-group nomenclature. The problem of homoplasy is confounded by a simple 

 lack of informative data for several taxa. Ferraris used many sexually dimorphic 

 characters to unite genera, especially within the centromochlid clade, and those in 

 his tribe Auchenipterini (Table 4). However, reproductively mature or nuptial 

 males of several genera were unavailable to him, and, from his list of material 

 examined, it is apparent that he did not examine many nominal species of several 

 genera. He sphts Trachelyopterus into three species assemblages, one of which does 

 not share any derived characters with the other two subgroups; what is especially 

 disconcerting about treatment of this genus, however, is his assertion that the other 

 two subgroups are sister taxa by a shared loss of sexual dimorphism (Ferraris 

 1988:117). I find that this is a precarious assumption, since Ferraris did not provide 

 any evidence to support such a hypothesis. The use of reductive characters to define 

 groups, in my opinion, rests on strong evidence that there has been paedomorphosis 

 or character reversal. This has not been unequivocally established with respect to 

 sexually dimorphic structures in Trachelyopterus. Thus, I choose to disregard 

 Ferraris' cluster of species into subgroups within Trachelyopterus, pending additional 

 data to support possible monophyletic lineages within the genus. Polychotomies in 

 Ferraris' cladogram more basal to the node defining for his Auchenipterini will not 



