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Do Macrophylogenies Yield Stable Macroevolutionary Inferences? An Example from Squamate Reptiles.
Pascal O Title1, Daniel L Rabosky1
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Systematic Biology
|November 9, 2016
Summary
Large phylogenetic trees (macrophylogenies) offer evolutionary insights but show significant discordance in analyses of Australian squamate reptiles. Accurately representing uncertainty in these trees remains a key challenge for macroevolution research.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary Biology
- Phylogenetics
- Macroevolution
Background:
- Advances in phylogenetic data generation and analysis allow for the creation of large phylogenies (macrophylogenies) with thousands of taxa.
- Macrophylogenies enable evolutionary analyses across broad phylogenetic scales, facilitating studies on speciation, extinction, and phenotypic evolution.
- These large trees often exhibit substantial phylogenetic uncertainty, and the reliability of macroevolutionary inferences derived from them requires rigorous exploration.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the congruence of inferences from five recent, large phylogenies (each >4000 species) for squamate reptiles.
- To investigate whether these phylogenies yield consistent results regarding the processes influencing species richness variation in Australian snake and lizard radiations.
- To assess the stability of macroevolutionary inferences derived from macrophylogenies.
Main Methods:
- Comparative analysis of five distinct, recently published phylogenies for squamate reptiles, each comprising over 4000 species.
- Examination of clade age, diversification rate metrics, and their relationship with species richness across Australian snake and lizard evolutionary radiations.
- Comparison of ages derived from the large phylogenies with existing literature-reported crown clade ages for Australian groups.
Main Results:
- Significant discordance was found across the five phylogenies regarding clade age and diversification rate metrics.
- The influence of clade age on species richness varied inconsistently across the phylogenies.
- Crown clade ages for Australian squamate groups from the literature conflicted with the ages derived from all five large phylogenies.
Conclusions:
- Macrophylogenies provide powerful tools for addressing evolutionary and ecological questions at broad phylogenetic scales.
- Substantial uncertainty inherent in macrophylogenies presents a critical challenge for robust macroevolutionary inference.
- Further development is needed to accurately represent and address phylogenetic uncertainty in large-scale evolutionary analyses.
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