Using Phylogenomic Data to Explore the Effects of Relaxed Clocks and Calibration Strategies on Divergence Time Estimation: Primates as a Test Case.

ABSTRACT: Primates have long been a test case for the development of phylogenetic methods for divergence time estimation. Despite a large number of studies, however, the timing of origination of crown Primates relative to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary and the timing of diversification of the main crown groups remain controversial. Here, we analysed a data set of 372 taxa (367 Primates and 5 outgroups, 3.4 million aligned base pairs) that includes nine primate genomes. We systematically explore the effect of different interpretations of fossil calibrations and molecular clock models on primate divergence time estimates. We find that even small differences in the construction of fossil calibrations can have a noticeable impact on estimated divergence times, especially for the oldest nodes i

SUBMITTER: Reis MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6005039 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature