Premium
PATTERNS IN TREE BALANCE AMONG CLADISTIC, PHENETIC, AND RANDOMLY GENERATED PHYLOGENETIC TREES
Author(s) -
Heard Stephen B.
Publication year - 1992
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/j.1558-5646.1992.tb01171.x
Subject(s) - biology , cladistics , genetic algorithm , cladogram , phylogenetic tree , evolutionary biology , extinction (optical mineralogy) , taxon , tree (set theory) , phylogenetic comparative methods , ecology , statistics , mathematics , paleontology , genetics , combinatorics , gene
I examine patterns in tree balance for a sample of 208 cladograms and phenograms from the recent literature. I provide an expression for expected imbalance under a simple, uniform‐rate random speciation model, and I estimate variances by simulation for the same model. Imbalance decreases with tree size (number of included taxa) in both theoretical and literature trees. In contrast to previous suggestions, I find cladistic trees to be no more imbalanced than phenetic trees when confounding variables are appropriately controlled. The degree of imbalance found in literature trees is inconsistent with the uniform‐rate speciation model; this is most likely a result of variability in speciation and extinction rates among real lineages. The existence of such variation is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the operation of the macroevolutionary processes of species sorting and species selection.