Post provided by Pasquale Raia

Phylogenetic Effects

Today, everyone knows about the importance of accounting for phylogenetic effects when it comes to understanding trait evolution. How to account for phylogenetic effects is another matter though.

A couple of years ago, I was having a discussion on the R-sig-phylo blog and dared to define the Brownian Motion (BM) as kind of a null hypothesis that more realistic scenarios should be compared to. Maybe I crossed a line or made too simplistic a statement (see Adams and Collyer’s article in Systematic Biology for an explanation of why this matter is far trickier and more complicated than my reply suggested). The point is, my comment was hotly contested and a colleague ‘put the onus on me’ to do something better than the almighty (emphasis mine) BM.

The RRphylo method was my attempt to do just that. It may not be better than BM, but it is different. Often, that can be exactly what you need. Continue reading →