Survival and selection biases in early animal evolution and a source of systematic overestimation in molecular clocks.

ABSTRACT: Important evolutionary events such as the Cambrian Explosion have inspired many attempts at explanation: why do they happen when they do? What shapes them, and why do they eventually come to an end? However, much less attention has been paid to the idea of a 'null hypothesis'-that certain features of such diversifications arise simply through their statistical structure. Such statistical features also appear to influence our perception of the timing of these events. Here, we show in particular that study of unusually large clades leads to systematic overestimates of clade ages from some types of molecular clocks, and that the size of this effect may be enough to account for the puzzling mismatches seen between these molecular clocks and the fossil record. Our analysis of the fossil record

SUBMITTER: Budd GE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7333906 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature