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QUANTIFYING VARIATION IN SPECIATION AND EXTINCTION RATES WITH CLADE DATA
Author(s) -
Paradis Emmanuel,
Tedesco Pablo A.,
Hugueny Bernard
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/evo.12256
Subject(s) - biology , clade , genetic algorithm , extinction (optical mineralogy) , range (aeronautics) , macroevolution , evolutionary biology , estimator , variation (astronomy) , statistics , phylogenetics , paleontology , genetics , mathematics , gene , materials science , physics , astrophysics , composite material
High‐level phylogenies are very common in evolutionary analyses, although they are often treated as incomplete data. Here, we provide statistical tools to analyze what we name “clade data,” which are the ages of clades together with their numbers of species. We develop a general approach for the statistical modeling of variation in speciation and extinction rates, including temporal variation, unknown variation, and linear and nonlinear modeling. We show how this approach can be generalized to a wide range of situations, including testing the effects of life‐history traits and environmental variables on diversification rates. We report the results of an extensive simulation study to assess the performance of some statistical tests presented here as well as of the estimators of speciation and extinction rates. These latter results suggest the possibility to estimate correctly extinction rate in the absence of fossils. An example with data on fish is presented.