TreeBASE Search-Trees for study 22395

@ARTICLE{TreeBASE2Ref28221, author = {Guillaume BILLET and J?r?mie Bardin}, title = {Serial Homology and Correlated Characters in Morphological Phylogenetics: Modeling the Evolution of Dental Crests in Placentals}, year = {2018}, keywords = {Morphological integration; phylogeny; morphology; paleontology; models; rates; categorical characters}, doi = {}, url = {http://}, pmid = {}, journal = {Systematic Biology}, volume = {}, number = {}, pages = {}, abstract = {Relevant modeling of the complexity of morphological evolution is crucial for morphological phylogenetics and for performing tests on a wide variety of evolutionary scenarios. It faces however many challenges, not the least of which is morphological integration and the problem of correlated categorical characters. In particular, the magnitude and implications of correlations among serially homologous structures such as teeth have been much debated but were never tested statistically within a broad phylogenetic context. Here, we present a large-scale empirical study analyzing the serial variation of cingular crests on successive molars (M1, M2 and M3) of 274 placental species in a phylogenetic context. Both likelihood analyses and analyses of phylogenetic co-distributions demonstrated highly correlated evolution in the entire sample and thus the non-independence of these serial features at a macroevolutionary scale. Likelihood analyses show that their serial variation should be better scored within a single composite character model with constrained paths for transitions enabling simultaneous changes on all three molars. These results are in good agreement with current molecular and developmental knowledge related to dental morphological variation and call into question the frequent use in phylogenetic analyses of separate characters scored on serially homologous structures of the dentition. Overall, they provide long-overdue and clear empirical evidence that in-depth studies of patterns of integration constitute an essential step towards more realistic character construction and modeling, and are thus critical to morphological phylogenetics. } }