Detecting the Anomaly Zone in Species Trees and Evidence for a Misleading Signal in Higher-Level Skink Phylogeny (Squamata: Scincidae).

ABSTRACT: The anomaly zone, defined by the presence of gene tree topologies that are more probable than the true species tree, presents a major challenge to the accurate resolution of many parts of the Tree of Life. This discrepancy can result from consecutive rapid speciation events in the species tree. Similar to the problem of long-branch attraction, including more data via loci concatenation will only reinforce the support for the incorrect species tree. Empirical phylogenetic studies often employ coalescent-based species tree methods to avoid the anomaly zone, but to this point these studies have not had a method for providing any direct evidence that the species tree is actually in the anomaly zone. In this study, we use 16 species of lizards in the family Scincidae to investigate whether node

SUBMITTER: Linkem CW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6383586 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature