Crisp Michael D, Cook Lyn G
School of Botany and Zoology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2005 Mar;20(3):122-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2004.11.010. Epub 2004 Dec 13.
A reverence for ancestors that has pre-occupied humans since time immemorial persists to the present. Reconstructing ancestry is the focus of many biological studies but failure to distinguish between present-day descendants and long-dead ancestors has led to incorrect interpretation of phylogenetic trees. This has resulted in erroneous reconstruction of traits such as morphology and ancestral areas. Misinterpretation becomes evident when authors use the terms 'basal' or 'early diverging' to refer to extant taxa. Here, we discuss the correct interpretation of trees and methods for reconstructing the ancestral features of organisms using recently developed statistical models. These models can be inaccurate unless they use information that is independent of phylogenies, such as genetics, molecular and developmental biology, functional morphology, geological and climatic processes, and the fossil record.
自远古以来就一直占据人类思想的对祖先的崇敬一直延续到现在。重建祖先谱系是许多生物学研究的重点，但未能区分现今的后代和早已死去的祖先导致了对系统发育树的错误解读。这已造成对诸如形态学和祖先分布区域等性状的错误重建。当作者使用“基部的”或“早期分化的”等术语来指代现存分类单元时，错误解读就变得明显了。在这里，我们讨论对系统发育树的正确解读以及使用最近开发的统计模型重建生物体祖先特征的方法。除非这些模型使用独立于系统发育的信息，如遗传学、分子与发育生物学、功能形态学、地质与气候过程以及化石记录，否则它们可能不准确。
