The general objectives of this study are to develop a convenient, easy to use computer system for calculating molecular phylogenies by evolutionary parsimony, maximum parsimony, and transversion parsimony and to provide it to the systematics community. We will provide programs that run on standard IBM personal computers, on IBM clones, and on apple computers, so that systematists can have convenient access to these programs in their offices and laboratories. This work is likely to catalyze rapid and innovative advances because it will make available a new algorithm for reconstructing phylogenetic trees that is theoretically the most robust yet devised.
