Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 25, 2025

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts
Published on: February 5, 2014
Gaussian process models for geographic controls in phylogenetic trees
Frederik Hartmann1, Gerhard Jäger2
1Department of Linguistics, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, 7620, USA.
Abstract:
Geographical confounding in phylogenetic inference models has long been an issue. Often models have great difficulty detecting whether congruences or similarities between languages in phylogenetic datasets stem from common genetic descent or geographical proximity effects such as language contact. In this study, we introduce a distance-based Gaussian process approach with latent phylogenetic distances that can detect potential geographic contact zones and subsequently account for geospatial biases in the resulting tree topologies. We find that this approach is able to determine potential high-contact areas, making it possible to calculate the strength of this influence on both the tree-level (clade support) and the language-level (pairwise distances).
Related Concept Videos
Phylogenetic Trees
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
In contrast, regions which code...
Phylogeny
Genetics of Speciation
Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift

