Biology 8th Edition by Kenneth Mason ,Jonathan Losos,Susan Singer,Peter Raven,George Johnson

Exercise 8

Identifying "outgroups" is a central component of cladistic analysis. As described on page 458 , a group is chosen that is closely related to, but not a part of the group under study. If one does not know the relationships of members of the group under study, how can one be certain that an appropriate outgroup is chosen Can you think of any approaches that would minimize the effect of a poor choice of outgroup