Molecular timetrees using relaxed clocks and uncertain phylogenies.

ABSTRACT: A common practice in molecular systematics is to infer phylogeny and then scale it to time by using a relaxed clock method and calibrations. This sequential analysis practice ignores the effect of phylogenetic uncertainty on divergence time estimates and their confidence/credibility intervals. An alternative is to infer phylogeny and times jointly to incorporate phylogenetic errors into molecular dating. We compared the performance of these two alternatives in reconstructing evolutionary timetrees using computer-simulated and empirical datasets. We found sequential and joint analyses to produce similar divergence times and phylogenetic relationships, except for some nodes in particular cases. The joint inference performed better when the phylogeny was not well resolved, situations in which

SUBMITTER: Barba-Montoya J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10435864 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature