Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sukumaran, Jeet
• Knowles, L. Lacey

Titel

Trait-Dependent Biogeography: (Re)Integrating Biology into Probabilistic Historical Biogeographical Models

Ist Teil von

• Trends in ecology & evolution (Amsterdam), 2018-06, Vol.33 (6), p.390-398

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Quelle

Access via ScienceDirect (Elsevier)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The development of process-based probabilistic models for historical biogeography has transformed the field by grounding it in modern statistical hypothesis testing. However, most of these models abstract away biological differences, reducing species to interchangeable lineages. We present here the case for reintegration of biology into probabilistic historical biogeographical models, allowing a broader range of questions about biogeographical processes beyond ancestral range estimation or simple correlation between a trait and a distribution pattern, as well as allowing us to assess how inferences about ancestral ranges themselves might be impacted by differential biological traits. We show how new approaches to inference might cope with the computational challenges resulting from the increased complexity of these trait-based historical biogeographical models. Current analytical models limit the scope of historical biogeographical questions. Incorporating trait-based analyses could quantitatively improve ancestral area estimation. Trait-based models are needed to address how biology shapes historical biogeographical processes. The increased computational complexity of trait-based analyses requires new approaches.