Ignoring stratigraphic age uncertainty leads to erroneous estimates of species divergence times under the fossilized birth-death process.

ABSTRACT: Fossil information is essential for estimating species divergence times, and can be integrated into Bayesian phylogenetic inference using the fossilized birth-death (FBD) process. An important aspect of palaeontological data is the uncertainty surrounding specimen ages, which can be handled in different ways during inference. The most common approach is to fix fossil ages to a point estimate within the known age interval. Alternatively, age uncertainty can be incorporated by using priors, and fossil ages are then directly sampled as part of the inference. This study presents a comparison of alternative approaches for handling fossil age uncertainty in analysis using the FBD process. Based on simulations, we find that fixing fossil ages to the midpoint or a random point drawn from within th

SUBMITTER: Barido-Sottani J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6532507 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature