Related papers: Diversity dynamics in Nymphalidae butterflies: Eff…
The branching structure of biological evolution confers statistical dependencies on phenotypic trait values in related organisms. For this reason, comparative macroevolutionary studies usually begin with an inferred phylogeny that describes…
Understanding the relationship between taxonomic and morphological changes is important in identifying the reasons for accelerated morphological diversification early in the history of animal phyla. Here, a simple general model describing…
During the last two decades, ecological speciation has been a major research theme in evolutionary biology. Ecological speciation occurs when reproductive isolation between populations evolves as a result of niche differentiation.…
Phylogenetic trees describe the relationships between species in the evolutionary process, and provide information about the rates of diversification. To understand the mechanisms behind macroevolution, we consider a class of multitype…
A number of methods have been developed to infer differential rates of species diversification through time and among clades using time-calibrated phylogenetic trees. However, we lack a general framework that can delineate and quantify…
Phylogenetic comparative methods explore the relationships between quantitative traits adjusting for shared evolutionary history. This adjustment often occurs through a Brownian diffusion process along the branches of the phylogeny that…
Genomic data are rapidly resolving the tree of living species calibrated to time, the timetree of life, which will provide a framework for research in diverse fields of science. Previous analyses of taxonomically restricted timetrees have…
Phylogenetic diversity indices such as the Fair Proportion (FP) index are frequently discussed as prioritization criteria in biodiversity conservation. They rank species according to their contribution to overall diversity by taking into…
An early burst of speciation followed by a subsequent slowdown in the rate of diversification is commonly inferred from molecular phylogenies. This pattern is consistent with some verbal theory of ecological opportunity and adaptive…
The Rosids is one of the largest groups of flowering plants, with 140 families and ~70,000 species. Previous phylogenetic studies of the rosids have primarily utilized organelle genes that likely differ in evolutionary histories from…
Recent methodological advances are enabling better examination of speciation and extinction processes and patterns. A major open question is the origin of large discrepancies in species number between groups of the same age. Existing…
Species richness varies widely across the tree of life, and there is great interest in identifying ecological, geographic, and other factors that affect rates of species proliferation. Recent methods for explicitly modeling the…
Dynamic programming approaches have long been applied to fit models of univariate and multivariate trait evolution on phylogenetic trees for discrete and continuous traits, and more recently adapted to phylogenetic networks with…
In this paper we present a new way to understand the timing of branching events in phylogenetic trees. Our method explicitly considers the relative timing of diversification events between sister clades; as such it is complimentary to…
The evolution of species habitat range is an important topic over a wide range of research fields. In higher organisms, habitat range evolution is generally associated with genetic events such as gene duplication. However, the specific…
Ecological selection is a major driver of community assembly. Selection is classified as stabilizing when species with intermediate trait values gain the highest reproductive success, whereas selection is considered directional when fitness…
Climate change impacts population distributions, forcing some species to migrate poleward if they are to survive and keep up with the suitable habitat that is shifting with the temperature isoclines. Previous studies have analyzed whether…
Inferring evolutionary histories (phylogenetic trees) has important applications in biology, criminology and public health. However, phylogenetic trees are complex mathematical objects that reside in a non-Euclidean space, which complicates…
Understanding the patterns and processes of diversification of life in the planet is a key challenge of science. The Tree of Life represents such diversification processes through the evolutionary relationships among the different taxa, and…
Evolutionary relationships among birds in Neoaves, the clade comprising the vast majority of avian diversity, have vexed systematists due to the ancient, rapid radiation of numerous lineages. We applied a new phylogenomic approach to…