Maximum parsimony is an intuitive and simple criterion, and it is popular for that reason. However, although it is possible to score a phylogenetic pine, there is not any algorithm to easily generate the most-parsimonious pine. Instead, the most-parsimonious tree should be found in “tree space”. For few taxa it is possible to do a exhaustive search, by which every possible pine is scored, along with the best one is actually selected.
Maximum Parsimony Phylogenetics
