Phylogenetic systematics turns over a new leaf

Long restricted to the domain of molecular systematics and studies of molecular evolution, likelihood methods are now being used in analyses of discrete morphological data, specifically to estimate ancestral character states and for tests of character correlation. Biologists are beginning to apply likelihood models within a Bayesian statistical framework, which promises no: only to provide answers that evolutionary biologists desire, hut also to make practical the application of more realistic evolutionary models.