Congruence of morphologically-defined genera with molecular phylogenies
David Jablonskia,1 and John A. Finarellib,c
+Author Affiliations
aDepartment of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637;
bDepartment of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, 2534 C. C. Little Building, 1100 North University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; and
cUniversity of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, 1529 Ruthven Museum, 1109 Geddes Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Communicated by James W. Valentine, University of California, Berkeley, CA, March 24, 2009 (received for review December 4, 2008)
Abstract
Morphologically-defined mammalian and molluscan genera (herein “morphogenera”) are significantly more likely to be monophyletic relative to molecular phylogenies than random, under 3 different models of expected monophyly rates: ≈63% of 425 surveyed morphogenera are monophyletic and 19% are polyphyletic, although certain groups appear to be problematic (e.g., nonmarine, unionoid bivalves). Compiled nonmonophyly rates are probably extreme values, because molecular analyses have focused on “problem” taxa, and molecular topologies (treated herein as error-free) contain contradictory groupings across analyses for 10% of molluscan morphogenera and 37% of mammalian morphogenera. Both body size and geographic range, 2 key macroevolutionary and macroecological variables, show significant rank correlations between values for morphogenera and molecularly-defined clades, even when strictly monophyletic morphogenera are excluded from analyses. Thus, although morphogenera can be imperfect reflections of phylogeny, large-scale statistical treatments of diversity dynamics or macroevolutionary variables in time and space are unlikely to be misleading.
biogeography body size macroecology macroevolution systematics
Footnotes
1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: djablons@uchicago.edu
Author contributions: D.J. designed research; D.J. and J.A.F. performed research; J.A.F. analyzed data; and D.J. and J.A.F. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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