CONTENTS 



Page 



Introduction 5 



Characterization of the Phocidae 5 



Taxonomic and systematic history . 6 



Points of contention 7 



The systematic status and interrelationships of the monk seals (genus Monachus) . . 7 



The taxonomic status of the genera within the Phocini 8 



The systematic status of the Monachinae 9 



Phocid phylogeny at the species level 10 



Ancestral affinities of the phocids 11 



Goals of this project 14 



Acknowledgements 16 



Methods and materials 17 



Data sources 17 



Specimens 17 



Characters 18 



Data collation 19 



Cladistic analysis 20 



Assumptions concerning characters 20 



Assumptions concerning taxa 22 



Search criteria and summarizing output 23 



Statistical tests 23 



Goodness-of-fit statistics 23 



The bootstrap 24 



Permutation tail probabilities 25 



Skewness 26 



Successive approximations 28 



Support analyses 28 



Comparative tools 29 



Constraint analyses 29 



Missing taxa 33 



Condensed analysis 33 



Unweighted analysis 38 



Taxonomic conventions 38 



Overall parsimony analysis 39 



Incidence of polymorphism 39 



Overall solution 39 



Outgroup relations 42 



Ingroup relations 43 



Relationships within the Monachinae 43 



Relationships within the Phocinae 44 



Summary of ingroup relationships 46 



Support for the overall solution 47 



Statistical tests 48 



Interpreting statistical results 48 



Character covariation within the data set 54 



