Lloyd, GT orcid.org/0000-0001-6887-3981 (2018) Journeys through discrete-character morphospace: synthesizing phylogeny, tempo, and disparity. Palaeontology, 61 (5). pp. 637-645. ISSN 0031-0239
Abstract
Palaeontologists have long employed discrete categorical data to capture morphological variation in fossil species, using the resulting character–taxon matrices to measure evolutionary tempo, infer phylogenies and capture morphological disparity. However, to date these have been seen as separate approaches despite a common goal of understanding morphological evolution over deep time. Here I argue that there are clear advantages to considering these three lines of enquiry in a single space: the phylomorphospace. Conceptually these high‐dimensional spaces capture how a phylogenetic tree explores morphospace and allow us to consider important process questions around evolutionary rates, constraints, convergence and directional trends. Currently the literature contains fundamentally different approaches used to generate such spaces, with no direct comparison between them, despite the differing evolutionary histories they imply. Here I directly compare five different phylomorphospace approaches, three with direct literature equivalents and two that are novel. I use a single empirical case study of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs (152 taxa, 853 characters) to show that under many analyses the literature‐derived approaches tend to reflect introduced phylogenetic (rather than the intended morphological) signal. The two novel approaches, which produce limited ancestral state estimates prior to ordination, are able to minimize this phylogenetic signal and thus exhibit more realistic amounts of phylogenetic signal, rate heterogeneity, and convergent evolution.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Palaeontological Association. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Lloyd, GT (2018) Journeys through discrete-character morphospace: synthesizing phylogeny, tempo, and disparity. Palaeontology, 61 (5). pp. 637-645. ISSN 0031-0239, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12380. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. |
Keywords: | ancestors; cladistics; disparity; morphology; phylogeny; tempo |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 28 Sep 2018 10:08 |
Last Modified: | 28 Jun 2019 00:40 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/pala.12380 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:136318 |