Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2012
Conflicting taxonomic decisions by classical systematists in the genus Iphiseius are examined against a numerical model. The relative weights given to characters are estimated by the amount each character must be changed to minimally permit each classical taxonomic decision. In the genus Iphiseius the taxonomic disagreements are due to heavy weighting of different small sets of characters based on groupings of historically prior clustering cycles.