Hello all, About a month ago, I made post seeking advice for free software for phylogenetic analysis of morphological data by undergraduate students and pasted below are the responses I received. Thank you all very much for your helpful suggestions. Response #1 You can try out Mesquite or Mcclade; or also Brownie 2.1 Response #2 Try TNT: http://www.zmuc.dk/public/phylogeny/TNT/ It's also very quick. Response #3 It is a deeply nontrivial matter, owing to most methods failing to correct for covariation between the characters. But anyway they should look at the list at my "Phylogeny Programs" listing (Google that phrase) and look under "data types" where there is a sublist for continuous quantitative characters. For discrete characters there are programs in the parsimony category, and for Bayesian treatment of 0/1 traits there are programs by Mark Pagel (BayesPhylogenies) and John Huelsenbeck and Fredrik Ronquist (in MrBayes). And there is an MCMC program by me based on the threshold model for 0/1 traits in quantitative genetics. Its link is in my paper in American Naturalist a month or two ago. J.F. ---- Joe Felsenstein Response #4 You can use Nona combined with Winclada provided by Pablo Golloboff. It is free, friendly using and fast. Response #5 it's been a while since I used it, but Mesquite is pretty good: http://mesquiteproject.org/mesquite/mesquite.html Response #6 I teach undergraduate courses and I have trouble finding the perfect freeware for morphological phylogenetic analysis. In the meantime, I use Mesquite and give the students a very detailed instruction (in German) so they don't mess up. The problem with Mesquite is that it puts out the same topology as a bunch of trees that differ only by the location of the root, which is very confusing to the user. Also confusing is that Mesquite has so many options and different ways of doing the same thing. Aside from that it's a great program. Response #7 (I will also make a suggestion; Biolinux. Just copy the files to a USB key, plug in the USB key and reboot. Then not only do you have lots of phylogenetic software but many other kinds of analysis software as well. Alternatively, web sites like Moblye from the Pasteur offer lots). Matthew Leo Knope