joe@GENETICS.WASHINGTON.EDU (Joe Felsenstein) (09/28/89)
In answer to Vincent Bauchau's inquiry about David Swofford's program
BIOSYS, the following is from the main documentation file of my own
package PHYLIP where I am discussing other packages including Swofford's
excellent parsimony program PAUP:
"Swofford also distributes an older package of programs, BIOSYS-1,
including some phylogeny estimation programs, for use with gene frequency
data, with particular attention to distance methods. BIOSYS-1 is distributed
on an IBM PC-formatted floppy disk. Included are precompiled versions for the
IBM PC and source code for uploading to IBM, VAX/VMS, Unix, Prime and CDC
mainframes and minicomputers. The price is $35.00. BIOSYS-2 is under
development, but it is too early to anticipate a completion date."
The address is David Swofford, Illinois Natural History Survey, Natural
Resources Building, 607 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA.
Dave has electronic mail but does not answer it these days as he is in a
rush to complete documentation on a new Macintosh version of PAUP.
BIOSYS is really alone in allowing handling of gene frequency data.
PHYLIP has a genetic distance program and distance matrix methods as
well as a maximum likelihood program, CONTML, which assumes a genetic
drift model of population divergence. But BIOSYS has a much wider
variety of methods available. Dave tells me that although there has
been more attention paid to PAUP, there is such a demand for BIOSYS that
he distributed more copies of it than of PAUP.
Joe Felsenstein, Dept. of Genetics, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
Internet/ARPAnet: joe@genetics.washington.edu
BITNET/EARN: FELSENST@UWALOCKE
UUCP: ... uw-beaver!uw-entropy!uw-evolution!joe