Testing the island rule: primates as a case study.

ABSTRACT: The island rule states that after island colonization, larger animals tend to evolve reduced body sizes and smaller animals increased sizes. Recently, there has been disagreement about how often, if ever, this rule applies in nature, and much of this disagreement stems from differences in the statistical tests employed. This study shows, how different tests of the island rule assume different null hypotheses, and that these rely on quite different biological assumptions. Analysis and simulation are then used to quantify the biases in the tests. Many widely used tests are shown to yield false support for the island rule when island and mainland evolution are indistinguishable, and so a Monte Carlo permutation test is introduced that avoids this problem. It is further shown that tests based

SUBMITTER: Welch JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2660931 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature