We reanalysed Yang & Pattern's allozyme data, published in Auk in 1981, of Darwin's finches with a variety of distance and cladistic methods to estimate the phylogeny of the group. Different methods yielded different results, nevertheless there was widespread agreement among the distance methods on several groupings. First, the two species of Camarhynchus grouped near one another, but not always as a monophyletic group. Second, Cactospiza pallida and Platyspiza crassirostris formed a monophyletic group. Finally, all the methods (including parsimony) supported the monophyly of the ground finches. The three distance methods also found close relationships generally between each of two populations of Geospiza scandens, G. difficilis and G. conirostris. There is evidence for inconstancy of evolutionary rates among species. Results from distance methods allowing for rate variation among lineages suggest three conclusions which differ from Yang and Patton's findings. First, the monophyletic ground finches arose from the paraphyletic tree finches. Yang and Patton found that the ground finches and tree finches were sister monophyletic taxa. Second, Geospiza scandens appears to be a recently derived species, and not the most basal ground finch. Third, G. fuliginosa is not a recently derived species of ground finch, but was derived from an older split from the remaining ground finches. Most of these conclusions should be considered tentative both because the parsimony trees disagreed sharply with the distance trees and because no clades were strongly supported by the results of bootstrapping and statistical tests of alternative hypotheses. Absence of strong support for clades was probably due to insufficient data. Future phylogenetic studies, preferably using DNA sequence data from several unlinked loci, should sample several populations of each species, and should attempt to assess the importance of hybridization in species phylogeny.

Colonies of the aphidPseudoregma alexanderi produce morphologically-specialized first-instar larvae, termed soldiers, that defend the colony from predators. The environmental cues and physiological mechanisms governing soldier production are currently unknown. Here we present a morphometric study of soldiers and normal first-instar larvae ofP. alexanderi. Several morphological features (fore-leg length and width, hind-leg length, and horn length) plotted against body length display relationship that are similar to a sigmoidal curve. We found further support for an earlier finding that soldiers fall into two size categories, majors and minors, although both types of soldiers appear to follow the same allometry. The patterns of allometry in the soldier-producing aphids are very different from those found in other social insects and do not easily fit into the traditional categorization of allometries. We present two simple alternative models of soldier development as a framework for guiding future studies of the mechanisms of soldier production.

1. Defensive individuals, termed soldiers, have recently been discovered in aphids, Soldiers are typically early instar larvae, and in many species the soldiers are reproductively sterile and morphologically and behaviourally specialized. 2. Since aphids reproduce parthenogenetically, we might expect soldier production to be more widespread in aphids than it is. We suggest that a more useful way to think about these problems is to attempt to understand how a clone (rather than an individual) should invest in defence and reproduction. 3. Known soldiers are currently restricted to two families of aphids, the Pemphigidae and Hormaphididae, although they are distributed widely among genera within these families. We discuss the use of a phylogenetic perspective to aid comparative studies of soldier production and we demonstrate this approach using current estimates of phylogenetic affinities among aphids. We show that the distribution of soldier production requires a minimum of six to nine evolutionary origins plus at least one loss. 4. At least four main types of soldiers exist and we present and discuss this diversity of soldiers. 5. Most soldier-producing species produce soldiers within plant galls and we discuss the importance of galls for the evolution of soldiers. 6. We summarize the evidence on the interactions between soldiers and predators and between soldier-producing aphids and ants. 7. We present an optimality model for soldier investment strategies to help guide investigations of the ecological factors selecting for soldiers. 8. The proximate mechanisms of soldier production are currently very poorly understood and we suggest several avenues for further research.