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A Darwinian Uncertainty Principle.

Olivier Gascuel1, Mike Steel2

  • 1Unité Bioinformatique Evolutive, C3BI USR 3756, Institut Pasteur & CNRS, Paris, France.

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|August 22, 2019
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Accurately reconstructing ancestral traits and evolutionary processes simultaneously is often impossible due to a fundamental trade-off. This "Darwinian uncertainty principle" limits ancestral state and rate estimation in phylogenetic analyses.

Keywords:
Ancestral statesYule and coalescent treesevolutionary patterns and processesinformation theoryphylogenytransition rates

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Phylogenetics
  • Computational biology

Background:

  • Reconstructing ancestral traits is crucial for understanding species evolution, morphology, and biogeography.
  • This involves inferring character states at the root and tracking changes along phylogenetic trees.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the accuracy of simultaneously estimating ancestral root states and rates of character change.
  • To identify limitations and trade-offs in ancestral reconstruction methods for discrete characters.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized mathematical modeling and computer simulations.
  • Focused on discrete (unique) character evolution, distinct from sequence data.

Main Results:

  • Accurate estimation of both root state and evolutionary rates is generally not feasible simultaneously.
  • A fundamental trade-off exists, termed the "Darwinian uncertainty principle," impacting accuracy.

Conclusions:

  • Simultaneous estimation of evolutionary patterns (root state) and processes (change rates) is inherently limited.
  • Tree shape influences the degree of uncertainty, with speciation trees sometimes reducing uncertainty with more data, unlike coalescent trees.