MorphoCode: coding quantitative data for phylogenetic analysis

Coding quantitative data has always been one of the most difficult steps in morphological phylogenetics. A robust and theoretically well-supported method for coding quantitative data was proposed by Thiele (1993). This method relies on differential weighting of gaps between coded states within one character. The downside of gap weighting is that it requires many calculations. In order to provide an easy way of integrating quantitative data into phylogenetic analyses, we have created MorphoCode, an open-source software project. MorphoCode implements a variation on Thiele's method and offers the user the possibility to import data as tab-separated text, to choose the number of character states and to export the newly coded data to a NEXUS file. MorphoCode is available for free on the internet: http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/bio/sys/mc