Franck Moreno-Roark

Bio: Franck Moreno-Roark is an academic researcher from Clarkson University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Adaptive radiation & Squamata. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 708 citations.

Early bursts of body size and shape evolution are rare in comparative data.

Abstract: George Gaylord Simpson famously postulated that much of life's diversity originated as adaptive radiations-more or less simultaneous divergences of numerous lines from a single ancestral adaptive type. However, identifying adaptive radiations has proven difficult due to a lack of broad-scale comparative datasets. Here, we use phylogenetic comparative data on body size and shape in a diversity of animal clades to test a key model of adaptive radiation, in which initially rapid morphological evolution is followed by relative stasis. We compared the fit of this model to both single selective peak and random walk models. We found little support for the early-burst model of adaptive radiation, whereas both other models, particularly that of selective peaks, were commonly supported. In addition, we found that the net rate of morphological evolution varied inversely with clade age. The youngest clades appear to evolve most rapidly because long-term change typically does not attain the amount of divergence predicted from rates measured over short time scales. Across our entire analysis, the dominant pattern was one of constraints shaping evolution continually through time rather than rapid evolution followed by stasis. We suggest that the classical model of adaptive radiation, where morphological evolution is initially rapid and slows through time, may be rare in comparative data.

Live birth among Iguanian lizards predates Pliocene–Pleistocene glaciations

Abstract: Among tetrapods, viviparity is estimated to have evolved independently within Squamata (lizards and snakes) more than 100 times, most frequently in species occupying cold climate environments. Because of this relationship with cold climates, it is sometimes assumed that many origins of squamate viviparity occurred over the past 2.5–4 Myr during the Pliocene–Pleistocene glaciations; however, this hypothesis is untested. Divergence-dating analysis on a 733-species tree of Iguanian lizards recovers 20 independent lineages that have evolved viviparity, of which 13 multispecies groups derived live birth prior to glacial advances (8–66 Myr ago). These results place the transitions from egg-laying to live birth among squamates in a well-supported historical context to facilitate examination of the underlying phenotypic and genetic changes associated with this complex shift in reproduction.

A phylogeny and revised classification of Squamata, including 4161 species of lizards and snakes

Abstract: The extant squamates (>9400 known species of lizards and snakes) are one of the most diverse and conspicuous radiations of terrestrial vertebrates, but no studies have attempted to reconstruct a phylogeny for the group with large-scale taxon sampling. Such an estimate is invaluable for comparative evolutionary studies, and to address their classification. Here, we present the first large-scale phylogenetic estimate for Squamata. The estimated phylogeny contains 4161 species, representing all currently recognized families and subfamilies. The analysis is based on up to 12896 base pairs of sequence data per species (average = 2497 bp) from 12 genes, including seven nuclear loci (BDNF, c-mos, NT3, PDC, R35, RAG-1, and RAG-2), and five mitochondrial genes (12S, 16S, cytochrome b, ND2, and ND4). The tree provides important confirmation for recent estimates of higher-level squamate phylogeny based on molecular data (but with more limited taxon sampling), estimates that are very different from previous morphology-based hypotheses. The tree also includes many relationships that differ from previous molecular estimates and many that differ from traditional taxonomy. We present a new large-scale phylogeny of squamate reptiles that should be a valuable resource for future comparative studies. We also present a revised classification of squamates at the family and subfamily level to bring the taxonomy more in line with the new phylogenetic hypothesis. This classification includes new, resurrected, and modified subfamilies within gymnophthalmid and scincid lizards, and boid, colubrid, and lamprophiid snakes.

A Linear-Time Algorithm for Gaussian and Non-Gaussian Trait Evolution Models

Abstract: We developed a linear-time algorithm applicable to a large class of trait evolution models, for efficient likelihood calculations and parameter inference on very large trees. Our algorithm solves the traditional computational burden associated with two key terms, namely the determinant of the phylogenetic covariance matrix V and quadratic products involving the inverse of V. Applications include Gaussian models such as Brownian motion-derived models like Pagel's lambda, kappa, delta, and the early-burst model; Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models to account for natural selection with possibly varying selection parameters along the tree; as well as non-Gaussian models such as phylogenetic logistic regression, phylogenetic Poisson regression, and phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models. Outside of phylogenetic regression, our algorithm also applies to phylogenetic principal component analysis, phylogenetic discriminant analysis or phylogenetic prediction. The computational gain opens up new avenues for complex models or extensive resampling procedures on very large trees. We identify the class of models that our algorithm can handle as all models whose covariance matrix has a 3-point structure. We further show that this structure uniquely identifies a rooted tree whose branch lengths parametrize the trait covariance matrix, which acts as a similarity matrix. The new algorithm is implemented in the R package phylolm, including functions for phylogenetic linear regression and phylogenetic logistic regression.

Probabilistic historical biogeography: new models for founder-event speciation, imperfect detection, and fossils allow improved accuracy and model-testing

Abstract: Historical biogeography has been characterized by a large diversity of methods and unresolved debates about which processes, such as dispersal or vicariance, are most important for explaining distributions. A new R package, BioGeoBEARS, implements many models in a common likelihood framework, so that standard statistical model selection procedures can be applied to let the data choose the best model. Available models include a likelihood version of DIVA (“DIVALIKE”), LAGRANGE’s DEC model, and BAYAREA, as well as “+J” versions of these models which include founder-event speciation, an important process left out of most inference methods. I use BioGeoBEARS on a large sample of island and non-island clades (including two fossil clades) to show that founder-event speciation is a crucial process in almost every clade, and that most published datasets reject the non-J models currently in widespread use. BioGeoBEARS is open-source and freely available for installation at the Comprehensive R Archive Network at http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=BioGeoBEARS. A step-by-step tutorial is available at http://phylo.wikidot.com/biogeobears.

Ecological opportunity and the origin of adaptive radiations

Abstract: Ecological opportunity – through entry into a new environment, the origin of a key innovation or extinction of antagonists – is widely thought to link ecological population dynamics to evolutionary diversification. The population-level processes arising from ecological opportunity are well documented under the concept of ecological release. However, there is little consensus as to how these processes promote phenotypic diversification, rapid speciation and adaptive radiation. We propose that ecological opportunity could promote adaptive radiation by generating specific changes to the selective regimes acting on natural populations, both by relaxing effective stabilizing selection and by creating conditions that ultimately generate diversifying selection. We assess theoretical and empirical evidence for these effects of ecological opportunity and review emerging phylogenetic approaches that attempt to detect the signature of ecological opportunity across geological time. Finally, we evaluate the evidence for the evolutionary effects of ecological opportunity in the diversification of Caribbean Anolis lizards. Some of the processes that could link ecological opportunity to adaptive radiation are well documented, but others remain unsupported. We suggest that more study is required to characterize the form of natural selection acting on natural populations and to better describe the relationship between ecological opportunity and speciation rates.

Modeling stabilizing selection: expanding the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model of adaptive evolution.

Abstract: Comparative methods used to study patterns of evolutionary change in a continuous trait on a phylogeny range from Brownian motion processes to models where the trait is assumed to evolve according to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) process. Although these models have proved useful in a variety of contexts, they still do not cover all the scenarios biologists want to examine. For models based on the OU process, model complexity is restricted in current implementations by assuming that the rate of stochastic motion and the strength of selection do not vary among selective regimes. Here, we expand the OU model of adaptive evolution to include models that variously relax the assumption of a constant rate and strength of selection. In its most general form, the methods described here can assign each selective regime a separate trait optimum, a rate of stochastic motion parameter, and a parameter for the strength of selection. We use simulations to show that our models can detect meaningful differences in the evolutionary process, especially with larger sample sizes. We also illustrate our method using an empirical example of genome size evolution within a large flowering plant clade.