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TESTING FOR PHYLOGENETIC SIGNAL IN BIOLOGICAL TRAITS: THE UBIQUITY OF CROSS‐PRODUCT STATISTICS
Author(s) -
Pavoine Sandrine,
Ricotta Carlo
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/j.1558-5646.2012.01823.x
Subject(s) - phylogenetic tree , biology , trait , statistic , phylogenetics , statistics , statistical hypothesis testing , phylogenetic comparative methods , evolutionary biology , test statistic , correlation , type i and type ii errors , mantel test , mathematics , genetics , computer science , genetic variation , geometry , gene , programming language
To evaluate rates of evolution, to establish tests of correlation between two traits, or to investigate to what degree the phylogeny of a species assemblage is predictive of a trait value so‐called tests for phylogenetic signal are used. Being based on different approaches, these tests are generally thought to possess quite different statistical performances. In this article, we show that the Blomberg et al. K and K* , the Abouheif index, the Moran's I , and the Mantel correlation are all based on a cross‐product statistic, and are thus all related to each other when they are associated to a permutation test of phylogenetic signal. What changes is only the way phylogenetic and trait similarities (or dissimilarities) among the tips of a phylogeny are computed. The definitions of the phylogenetic and trait‐based (dis)similarities among tips thus determines the performance of the tests. We shortly discuss the biological and statistical consequences (in terms of power and type I error of the tests) of the observed relatedness among the statistics that allow tests for phylogenetic signal. Blomberg et al. K * statistic appears as one on the most efficient approaches to test for phylogenetic signal. When branch lengths are not available or not accurate, Abouheif's C mean statistic is a powerful alternative to K *.