School of Plant Sciences and Food Security, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel.
School of Molecular Cell Biology & Biotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel-Aviv, 69978, Israel.
Nat Commun. 2019 Feb 25;10(1):934. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-08822-w.
Determining the most suitable model for phylogeny reconstruction constitutes a fundamental step in numerous evolutionary studies. Over the years, various criteria for model selection have been proposed, leading to debate over which criterion is preferable. However, the necessity of this procedure has not been questioned to date. Here, we demonstrate that although incongruency regarding the selected model is frequent over empirical and simulated data, all criteria lead to very similar inferences. When topologies and ancestral sequence reconstruction are the desired output, choosing one criterion over another is not crucial. Moreover, skipping model selection and using instead the most parameter-rich model, GTR+I+G, leads to similar inferences, thus rendering this time-consuming step nonessential, at least under current strategies of model selection.
确定最适合系统发育重建的模型是众多进化研究中的基本步骤。多年来，已经提出了各种模型选择标准，导致了关于哪种标准更可取的争论。然而，迄今为止，还没有人质疑这一程序的必要性。在这里，我们证明，尽管在经验和模拟数据中，选择的模型不一致是很常见的，但所有的标准都会导致非常相似的推断。当所需的输出是拓扑结构和祖先序列重建时，选择一个标准而不是另一个标准并不重要。此外，跳过模型选择，而使用参数最丰富的模型 GTR+I+G，也会得到相似的推断，因此，至少在当前的模型选择策略下，这个耗时的步骤并不是必需的。
