Data from: How many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny?

Despite increased recent attention towards Bayesian phylogenetics and its
applications in understanding macroevolutionary processes, it remains
unclear how many discrete characters are needed to accurately estimate
tree topologies in a Bayesian framework. This could be particularly
relevant for morphological datasets used in phylogenetics, as they usually
consist of few dozens to few hundreds of characters—orders of magnitude
smaller than most molecular datasets. I designed a simulation study in the
software RevBayes to explore how the number of sampled discrete characters
affects accuracy and precision of Bayesian phylogenetic estimates, under
various setups differing in number of taxa, average number of state
changes per character (i.e., tree length), and number of states per
character. Results indicate that between 100 and 500 variable characters
are necessary to reach sufficient accuracy and precision of phylogenetic
estimates for as low as 20 tips. All other parameters being equal,
multistate characters produce slightly more accurate estimates than binary
characters, and more labile characters produce more accurate estimates for
trees above 50 tips. The results of this study highlight the continuous
need for global research efforts geared towards the characterization and
digitization of interspecific morphological diversity in both extant and
extinct taxa.