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Abstract Detail



Morphospaces, Morphometrics, and Phylogenetics

Perrard, Adrien [1].

Phylomorphospace: combining morphospace and phylogeny.

In biology, one of the most important components of morphological variation is the evolutionary history. Due to common ancestry, the morphological data of different species cannot be considered as independent values. Taking into account for the phylogeny is thus important to understand the patterns of morphological variation. Thanks to the concept of morphospace, the morphological variation can be depicted in an evolutionary framework by estimating the historical variation of the morphology. This is the goal of the phylomorphospace, a visualization of the phylogenetic relationships in a morphospace. For this visualization, ancestral states are inferred according to a model of character evolution following a known phylogeny based on other data. For continuous characters, the most commonly used model is the random-walk, or Brownian motion model, with ancestral states estimated using maximum likelihood or squared-change parsimony. The phylogenetic tree is then mapped in the morphospace by linking ancestral (inferred) and current (observed) morphologies across the space of potential morphologies. Through different examples, I will present how phylomorphospaces can be used to detect several events such as morphological radiations of some clades or the presence of convergent or constrained evolution. The phylogenetic signal can also be tested through this method, with an estimation of the homoplasy of the phenotype. While the phylomorphospace does not always provide the best statistical framework to test these hypotheses, it is an efficient and intuitive method to visualize and to understand the evolutionary aspects of the observed morphological variation.


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1 - American Museum of Natural History, Invertebrate Zoology, 79th Street at Central Park West, New York, NY, 10024, USA

Keywords:
Comparative analysis
morphology
Ancestral state
Rapid radiation
Convergence
Phylogenetic signal.

Presentation Type: Symposium Presentation
Session: SY06
Location: Salon 10/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Monday, July 27th, 2015
Time: 2:45 PM
Number: SY06004
Abstract ID:492
Candidate for Awards:None


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