Shannon Entropy and Informational Redundancy in Minimally Monophyletic Bryophyte Genera.

The degree of informational redundancy is often examined in genetic studies but not yet detailed for taxa conceived as minimally monophyletic groups (microgenus). Evolutionary processes in microgenera were reviewed, detailing critical sets of traits, the novon, the immediate ancestron, and the ancestron. Calculations were made from known intra-genus character state changes for maximum entropy, Shannon entropy, and entropic redundancy. Additional evaluations of contrived data sets were intended to evaluate the range of informational variation in small, medium, and large numbers of species and traits. Results indicate that measures of Shannon information and redundancy are rather similar in all but microgenera with the smallest number of species and traits per species. Hypothetically, this similarity is due to the fairly constant balance between numbers of newly evolved traits and traits monothetically redundant because all are shared with all species in the genus. This balance may be explained by a selective construct or emergent property that balances innovation leading to the colonization of new niches and conservation of proven ancestral traits for survival sympatricially and peripatrically in the particular challenges of the ancestor's niche. The entropic redundancy calculations indicate that 0.20 to 0.30 of the information in a microgenus serves as flexibility in survival adaptation at the genus level.