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Evolutionary trees can’t reveal speciation and extinction rates

Evolutionary-tree diagrams, which show the branching relationships between species, are widely used to estimate the rates at which new species arise and existing ones become extinct. New work casts doubt on this approach.
  1. Mark Pagel

    1. Mark Pagel is at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6UR, UK.

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Scientists often want to make inferences about what the biological past was like, and how that past gave rise to the present, because doing so allows them to understand the processes that drive evolution. But, writing in Nature, Louca and Pennell1 challenge a major aspect of that enterprise.

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Nature 580, 461-462 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01021-4

References

  1. Louca, S. & Pennell, M. W. Nature 580, 502–505 (2020).

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  2. Nee, S., Holmes, E. C., May, R. M. & Harvey, P. H. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 344, 77–82 (1994).

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  3. Kubo, T. & Iwasa, Y. Evolution 49, 694–704 (1995).

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  4. Morlon, H. Ecol. Lett. 17, 508–525 (2014).

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