Journal
EVOLUTION
Volume 69, Issue 5, Pages 1301-1312Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/evo.12644
Keywords
Hummingbirds; sensitivity analysis; uncertainty quantification
Categories
Funding
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) [564718/2010-6]
- National Science Foundation (USA) [DEB-0639979, DBI-0851245, DEB-1036448]
- Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES)
- Alexander Wetmore Fund of the Smithsonian Institution
- Smoketree Trust
- Danish National Research Foundation
- Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate
- CAPES
- CNPq
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1036448] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Ecologists and biogeographers usually rely on a single phylogenetic tree to study evolutionary processes that affect macroecological patterns. This approach ignores the fact that each phylogenetic tree is a hypothesis about the evolutionary history of a clade, and cannot be directly observed in nature. Also, trees often leave out many extant species, or include missing species as polytomies because of a lack of information on the relationship among taxa. Still, researchers usually do not quantify the effects of phylogenetic uncertainty in ecological analyses. We propose here a novel analytical strategy to maximize the use of incomplete phylogenetic information, while simultaneously accounting for several sources of phylogenetic uncertainty that may distort statistical inferences about evolutionary processes. We illustrate the approach using a clade-wide analysis of the hummingbirds, evaluating how different sources of uncertainty affect several phylogenetic comparative analyses of trait evolution and biogeographic patterns. Although no statistical approximation can fully substitute for a complete and robust phylogeny, the method we describe and illustrate enables researchers to broaden the number of clades for which studies informed by evolutionary relationships are possible, while allowing the estimation and control of statistical error that arises from phylogenetic uncertainty. Software tools to carry out the necessary computations are offered.
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