Rapidly changing speciation and extinction rates can be inferred in spite of nonidentifiability.

ABSTRACT: The birth-death model is commonly used to infer speciation and extinction rates by fitting the model to phylogenetic trees with exclusively extant taxa. Recently, it was demonstrated that speciation and extinction rates are not identifiable if the rates are allowed to vary freely over time. The group of birth-death models that have the same likelihood is called a congruence class, and there is no statistical evidence to favor one model over the other. This issue has led researchers to question if and what patterns can reliably be inferred from phylogenies of only extant taxa and whether time-variable birth-death models should be fitted at all. We explore the congruence class in the context of several empirical phylogenies as well as hypothetical scenarios. For these empirical phylogenies,

SUBMITTER: Kopperud BT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9963352 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature