Speciation and the error we make in phylogenetic inference
Year: 2020
Type: dissertation
Abstract: An evolutionary tree (also known as a phylogeny), is a tree-like diagram that shows the evolutionary relationship among species (e.g. humans are closer related to chimps than to crocodiles). Creating and interpreting these are important to understand speciation. A biologist makes quite some assumptions when creating an evolutionary species tree from DNA. When are these assumptions too simple or needlessly complicated? This research proposes a novel method to answer this question. This Bayesian method, named 'pirouette', does so for standard speciation models, but also for new, less explored ones. When applying 'pirouette' to a new speciation model, we conclude that, would nature allow multiple speciations to occur simultaneously, standard speciation models still give satisfactory evolutionary trees.
Author: Richèl J.C. Bilderbeek
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3093609650