Budd, GE and Mann, RP orcid.org/0000-0003-0701-1274 (2020) Survival and selection biases in early animal evolution and a source of systematic overestimation in molecular clocks. Interface Focus, 10 (4). 20190110. ISSN 2042-8898
Abstract
Important evolutionary events such as the Cambrian Explosion have inspired many attempts at explanation: why do they happen when they do? What shapes them, and why do they eventually come to an end? However, much less attention has been paid to the idea of a ‘null hypothesis’—that certain features of such diversifications arise simply through their statistical structure. Such statistical features also appear to influence our perception of the timing of these events. Here, we show in particular that study of unusually large clades leads to systematic overestimates of clade ages from some types of molecular clocks, and that the size of this effect may be enough to account for the puzzling mismatches seen between these molecular clocks and the fossil record. Our analysis of the fossil record of the late Ediacaran to Cambrian suggests that it is likely to be recording a true evolutionary radiation of the bilaterians at this time, and that explanations involving various sorts of cryptic origins for the bilaterians do not seem to be necessary.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | Crown groups, diversification rates, the push ofthe past, molecular clocks, Cambrian explosion |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Mathematics (Leeds) > Pure Mathematics (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number MRC (Medical Research Council) MR/S032525/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 May 2020 11:33 |
Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2020 13:56 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rsfs.2019.0110 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:160396 |