Morphological matrix

The morphological matrix presents 20 continuous and 243 discrete characters, encompassing external morphology, osteology, musculature, laterosensory canals, and color pattern, among others. Characters referring to meristics (number of vertebrae, rays, fin- insertions, etc.) and linear measurements (as proportions of head or standard length) were treated as continuous, thus avoiding the possible distortions produced by the discretization of such data. Continuous characters were also rescaled from zero (lowest value) to one (highest value) to prevent unbalanced dominance of characters expressed in different orders of magnitude.