phylosignal: an R package to measure, test, and explore the phylogenetic signal

Abstract

Phylogenetic signal is the tendency for closely related species to display similar trait values as a consequence of their phylogenetic proximity. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are becoming increasingly interested in studying the phylogenetic signal and the processes which drive patterns of trait values in the phylogeny. Here, we present a new R package, phylosignal which provides a collection of tools to explore the phylogenetic signal for continuous biological traits. These tools are mainly based on the concept of autocorrelation and have been first developed in the field of spatial statistics. To illustrate the use of the package, we analyze the phylogenetic signal in pollution sensitivity for 17 species of diatoms.

Keywords

Autocorrelation; comparative analysis; phylogenetic correlogram; phylogenetic signal; R software; trait evolution

Published in

Ecology and Evolution
2016, Volume: 6, number: 9, pages: 2774-2780

UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.2051

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/85015