Testing for phylogenetic signal in comparative data: behavioral traits are more labile.
TLDR
Analysis of variance of log K for all 121 traits indicated that behavioral traits exhibit lower signal than body size, morphological, life-history, or physiological traits, and this work presents new methods for continuous-valued characters that can be implemented with either phylogenetically independent contrasts or generalized least-squares models.Abstract:
The primary rationale for the use of phylogenetically based statistical methods is that phylogenetic signal, the tendency for related species to resemble each other, is ubiquitous. Whether this assertion is true for a given trait in a given lineage is an empirical question, but general tools for detecting and quantifying phylogenetic signal are inadequately developed. We present new methods for continuous-valued characters that can be implemented with either phylogenetically independent contrasts or generalized least-squares models. First, a simple randomization procedure allows one to test the null hypothesis of no pattern of similarity among relatives. The test demonstrates correct Type I error rate at a nominal α = 0.05 and good power (0.8) for simulated datasets with 20 or more species. Second, we derive a descriptive statistic, K, which allows valid comparisons of the amount of phylogenetic signal across traits and trees. Third, we provide two biologically motivated branch-length transformat...read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
phytools: an R package for phylogenetic comparative biology (and other things)
TL;DR: A new, multifunctional phylogenetics package, phytools, for the R statistical computing environment is presented, with a focus on phylogenetic tree-building in 2.1.
Journal ArticleDOI
Picante: R tools for integrating phylogenies and ecology
Steven W. Kembel,Peter Cowan,Matthew R. Helmus,William K. Cornwell,Hélène Morlon,David D. Ackerly,Simon P. Blomberg,Campbell O. Webb +7 more
TL;DR: Picante is a software package that provides a comprehensive set of tools for analyzing the phylogenetic and trait diversity of ecological communities and performs tests for phylogenetic signal in trait distributions, community structure and species interactions.
Journal ArticleDOI
Environmental niche equivalency versus conservatism: quantitative approaches to niche evolution.
TL;DR: New methods for quantifying niche overlap that rely on a traditional ecological measure and a metric from mathematical statistics are developed and suggest various randomization tests that may prove useful in other areas of ecology and evolutionary biology.
Journal ArticleDOI
Phylocom: software for the analysis of phylogenetic community structure and trait evolution.
TL;DR: Phylocom calculates numerous metrics of phylogenetic community structure and trait similarity within communities and measures phylogenetic signal and correlated evolution for species traits.
Journal ArticleDOI
Niche conservatism as an emerging principle in ecology and conservation biology.
John J. Wiens,David D. Ackerly,Andrew P. Allen,Brian L. Anacker,Lauren B. Buckley,Howard V. Cornell,Ellen I. Damschen,T. Jonathan Davies,T. Jonathan Davies,John-Arvid Grytnes,Susan Harrison,Bradford A. Hawkins,Robert D. Holt,Christy M. McCain,Patrick R. Stephens +14 more
TL;DR: The mounting evidence for the importance of niche conservatism to major topics in ecology and conservation and other areas where it may be important but has generally been overlooked is described.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Phylogenies and the Comparative Method
TL;DR: A method of correcting for the phylogeny has been proposed, which specifies a set of contrasts among species, contrasts that are statistically independent and can be used in regression or correlation studies.
Book
The comparative method in evolutionary biology
Paul H. Harvey,Mark Pagel +1 more
TL;DR: The comparative method for studying adaptation why worry about phylogeny?
Book
The Theory and Practice of Econometrics
TL;DR: The Classical Inference Approach for the General Linear Model, Statistical Decision Theory and Biased Estimation, and the Bayesian Approach to Inference are reviewed.