Wright April M
Department of Biological Sciences, Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA.
Insect Syst Divers. 2019 May;3(3):2. doi: 10.1093/isd/ixz006. Epub 2019 Jun 18.
Phylogenetic trees are crucial to many aspects of taxonomic and comparative biology. Many researchers have adopted Bayesian methods to estimate their phylogenetic trees. In this family of methods, a model of morphological evolution is assumed to have generated the data observed by the researcher. These models make a variety of assumptions about the evolution of morphological characters, and these assumptions are translated into mathematics as parameters. The incorporation of prior distributions further allows researchers to quantify their prior beliefs about the value any one parameter can take. How to translate biological knowledge into mathematical language is difficult, and can be confusing to many biologists. This review aims to help systematics researchers understand the biological meaning of common models and assumptions. Using examples from the insect fossil record, I will demonstrate empirically what assumptions mean in concrete terms, and discuss how researchers can use and understand Bayesian methods for phylogenetic estimation.
系统发育树对于分类学和比较生物学的许多方面都至关重要。许多研究人员采用贝叶斯方法来估计他们的系统发育树。在这一系列方法中，假定形态进化模型产生了研究人员所观察到的数据。这些模型对形态特征的进化做出了各种假设，而这些假设被转化为数学参数。先验分布的纳入进一步使研究人员能够量化他们对任何一个参数可能取值的先验信念。如何将生物学知识转化为数学语言是困难的，并且可能让许多生物学家感到困惑。本综述旨在帮助系统分类学研究人员理解常见模型和假设的生物学意义。通过昆虫化石记录中的例子，我将实证展示这些假设在具体情况下的含义，并讨论研究人员如何使用和理解用于系统发育估计的贝叶斯方法。
