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Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin
Published on: August 14, 2018
Poor statistical performance of the Mantel test in phylogenetic comparative analyses
Luke J Harmon1, Richard E Glor
1Department of Biological Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844, USA. lukeh@uidaho.edu
Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution
|February 19, 2010
Summary
The Mantel test shows poor performance in comparative biology, with low power and inflated type-I error. Researchers recommend restricting its use to pairwise distance data among taxa.
Area of Science:
- Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Bioinformatics
- Statistical Biology
Background:
- The Mantel test is widely used in comparative biology for analyzing distance matrices.
- Its statistical performance and reliability in these applications remain largely unexamined.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the performance of the Mantel test in two key comparative biology applications: assessing phylogenetic signal and testing for evolutionary correlations between traits.
- To compare the Mantel test's efficacy against alternative statistical methods.
Main Methods:
- Performance evaluation of the Mantel test using simulations and empirical data.
- Comparison with alternative methods such as independent contrasts.
- Investigation of phylogenetic permutations as a potential remedy for type-I error inflation in three-way Mantel tests.
Main Results:
- The Mantel test demonstrates suboptimal performance, characterized by low statistical power and, in certain scenarios, an elevated rate of type-I errors.
- Phylogenetic permutations can correct type-I error inflation in three-way Mantel tests but do not fully resolve power limitations.
- The Mantel test exhibits significantly lower power compared to independent contrasts.
Conclusions:
- The Mantel test is not a recommended primary method for testing phylogenetic signal or evolutionary correlations due to its statistical limitations.
- Its application should be confined to situations where data are exclusively available as pairwise distances between taxa.
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