Identifying Hidden Rate Changes in the Evolution of a Binary Morphological Character: The Evolution of Plant Habit in Campanulid Angiosperms

The growth of phylogenetic trees in scope and in size is promising from the standpoint of understanding a wide variety of evolutionary patterns and processes. With trees comprised of larger, older, and globally distributed clades, it is likely that the lability of a binary character will differ sign...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Systematic biology 2013-09, Vol.62 (5), p.725-737
Main Authors: Beaulieu, Jeremy M., O'Meara, Brian C., Donoghue, Michael J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biodiversity
Biological Evolution
Campanulaceae - anatomy & histology
Campanulaceae - classification
Classification - methods
Comparative analysis
Computer Simulation
Datasets
Evolution
Flowers & plants
Modeling
Models, Biological
Parametric models
Parsimony
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Simulations
Taxa
Time
Trees
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Summary:The growth of phylogenetic trees in scope and in size is promising from the standpoint of understanding a wide variety of evolutionary patterns and processes. With trees comprised of larger, older, and globally distributed clades, it is likely that the lability of a binary character will differ significantly among lineages, which could lead to errors in estimating transition rates and the associated inference of ancestral states. Here we develop and implement a new method for identifying different rates of evolution in a binary character along different branches of a phylogeny. We illustrate this approach by exploring the evolution of growth habit in Campanulidae, a flowering plant clade containing some 35,000 species. The distribution of woody versus herbaceous species calls into question the use of traditional models of binary character evolution. The recognition and accommodation of changes in the rate of growth form evolution in different lineages demonstrates, for the first time, a robust picture of growth form evolution across a very large, very old, and very widespread flowering plant clade.
ISSN:1063-5157
1076-836X
DOI:10.1093/sysbio/syt034