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Reply to: Modelling hominin evolution requires accurate hominin data

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 1092–1094 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 04 July 2022

replying to C. S. Mongle et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01791-2 (2022).

Mongle et al. criticize the apparent redundancy of some of the morphological characters used by Dembo et al.5,6. However, they do not provide an empirical assessment showing how the exclusion of these characters affects our divergence-time estimates. An empirical assessment is the only way of testing their claim that redundancy would influence the estimation of divergence times and/or the evolutionary rates. Hence, we re-ran our analysis excluding the characters considered redundant by Mongle et al. The obtained results unequivocally show that a “redundant” character matrix is not an issue2 for our analyses, as there is considerable overlap in the 95% HPDs of divergence times obtained in both analyses (Fig. 1) and the mean percentage difference for the node mean ages is ~2% (2.02%; Supplementary Table 2 and Fig. 1). In addition, when following Mongle et al.’s own list, we were able to remove only 25% of the characters, which means that the 40% value mentioned by Mongle et al.7 is unfounded. Furthermore, many of the characters considered redundant by Mongle et al. are questionable, as evident from their own list (depending on the applied criteria they can or cannot be considered redundant; see, for example, characters 22 and 23, among many others). Mongle et al. seem also to ignore the modifications made to the Dembo et al.5 matrix in Dembo et al.6. To give one example, Mongle et al. consider redundant a character that was already removed in the matrix of Dembo et al.6 (that is, character 63: alveolar clivus shape).

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Fig. 1: The effect of different calibration approaches in divergence-time estimates in TED analyses of the hominin phylogeny.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID)/PFCHA/Doctorado en el extranjero Becas Chile/2018-72190003 to H.P.P.; a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018-2020; no. 792611) and the European Research Council starting grant PalM, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (no. 756226) to O.C.B.; and the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship, ECF-2018-264 to T.A.P.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Grant Institute, Edinburgh, UK

    Hans P. Püschel & Ornella C. Bertrand

  2. MRC Human Genetics Unit, MRC Institute of Genetics & Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, UK

    Joseph E. O’ Reilly

  3. Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, Institute of Human Sciences, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    René Bobe & Thomas A. Püschel

  4. Gorongosa National Park, Sofala, Mozambique

    René Bobe

  5. School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK

    Thomas A. Püschel

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  1. Hans P. Püschel
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  3. Joseph E. O’ Reilly
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Contributions

H.P.P. and T.A.P. conceived and designed the reply. H.P.P. carried out all the mentioned analyses. H.P.P. and T.A.P. wrote an initial draft. H.P.P., O.C.B., J.E.O., R.B. and T.A.P. interpreted the obtained results and contributed to the writing of the submitted version of this work.

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Correspondence to Hans P. Püschel or Thomas A. Püschel.

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Püschel, H.P., Bertrand, O.C., Reilly, J.E.O. et al. Reply to: Modelling hominin evolution requires accurate hominin data. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 1092–1094 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01792-1

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