Inferring the mammal tree: Species-level sets of phylogenies for questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation.

ABSTRACT: Big, time-scaled phylogenies are fundamental to connecting evolutionary processes to modern biodiversity patterns. Yet inferring reliable phylogenetic trees for thousands of species involves numerous trade-offs that have limited their utility to comparative biologists. To establish a robust evolutionary timescale for all approximately 6,000 living species of mammals, we developed credible sets of trees that capture root-to-tip uncertainty in topology and divergence times. Our "backbone-and-patch" approach to tree building applies a newly assembled 31-gene supermatrix to two levels of Bayesian inference: (1) backbone relationships and ages among major lineages, using fossil node or tip dating, and (2) species-level "patch" phylogenies with nonoverlapping in-groups that each correspond to on

SUBMITTER: Upham NS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6892540 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature