Using the BirdTree.org website to obtain robust phylogenies for avian comparative studies： A primer  

作　　者：Diego RUBOLINI Andras LIKER Laszlo Z. GARAMSZEGI Anders P. MOLLEIR Nicola SAINO 

机构地区：[1]Dipartimento di Bioscienze, Universita degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 26, 1-20133 Milano, Italy [2]Department of Limnology, University of Pannonia, Pf. 158, H-8201 Veszpr6m, Hungary [3]Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Estaci6n Biol6gica de Dofiana-CSIC, c/Americo Vespucio s/n, E-41092 Seville, Spain [4]Laboratoire Ecologie, Systematique et Evolution, UMR 8079 CNRS, Universit6 Paris-Sud XI-AgroParisTech, Batiment 362 Universit6 Paris-Sud XI, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2015年第6期959-965,共7页动物学报（英文版）

摘　　要：Comparative studies of trait evolution require accounting for the shared evolutionary history. This is done by includ- ing phylogenetic hypotheses into statistical analyses of species＇ traits, for which birds often serve as excellent models. The online publication of the most complete molecular phylogeny of extant bird species （www.birdtree.org, BirdTree hereafter） now allows evolutionary biologists to rapidly obtain sets of equally plausible phylogenetic trees for any set of species to be incorporated as a phylogenetic hypothesis in comparative analyses. We discuss methods to use BirdTree tree sets for comparative studies, either by building a consensus tree that can be incorporated into standard comparative analyses, or by using tree sets to account for the ef- fect of phylogenetie uncertainty. Methods accounting for phylogenetic uncertainty should be preferred whenever possible because they should provide more reliable parameter estimates and realistic confidence intervals around them. Based on a real compara- tive dataset, we ran simulations to investigate the effect of variation in the size of the random tree sets downloaded from BirdTree on the variability of parameter estimates from a bivariate relationship between mass-specific productivity and body mass. Irre- spective of the method of analysis, using at least 1,000 trees allows obtaining parameter estimates with very small （〈 0.15%） co- efficients of variation. We argue that BirdTree, due to the ease of use and the major advantages over previous ＇traditional＇ meth- ods to obtain phylogenetic hypotheses of bird species （e.g. supertrees or manual coding of published phylogenies）, will become the standard reference in avian comparative studies for years to come.

关 键 词：Birds BirdTree Comparative method PGLM PGLS Phylogenetic uncertainty 

分 类 号：TP393.092[自动化与计算机技术—计算机应用技术] Q959.722[自动化与计算机技术—计算机科学与技术]