Inferring Phenotypic Trait Evolution on Large Trees With Many Incomplete Measurements.

ABSTRACT: Comparative biologists are often interested in inferring covariation between multiple biological traits sampled across numerous related taxa. To properly study these relationships, we must control for the shared evolutionary history of the taxa to avoid spurious inference. An additional challenge arises as obtaining a full suite of measurements becomes increasingly difficult with increasing taxa. This generally necessitates data imputation or integration, and existing control techniques typically scale poorly as the number of taxa increases. We propose an inference technique that integrates out missing measurements analytically and scales linearly with the number of taxa by using a post-order traversal algorithm under a multivariate Brownian diffusion (MBD) model to characterize trait evol

SUBMITTER: Hassler G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9438787 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature