ArticlePLoS biology2006
Relaxed phylogenetics and dating with confidence.
Article in PLoS biology, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2,365 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2,365 citing papers in PubMed.
- Competing methods of divergence time estimation recover diverse evolutionary timescales.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
- The Limits of Bayesian Estimates of Divergence Times in Measurably Evolving Populations.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Description of Flavicapitulum gen. nov. and two new species of Marmoreocelis from thermal habitats in the Americas.Journal of phycology · 2026Article
- Environmental Context of Hominin Foot Evolution.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Complete Mitogenomes of the Critically Endangered Hainan Gibbon (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Article
- Estimating Divergence Times and Diversification Rates with the Unresolved Fossilized Birth-Death Process.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Three thousand five hundred years of sheeppox virus evolution inferred from archaeological and codicological genomes.Science advances · 2026Article
- Hidden Diversity in the Sands: Genomic Footprints of Pleistocene Refugia and Fragile Futures of the Turkestan Ground-Jay (Podoces panderi) in Central Asia.Integrative zoology · 2026Article
- The Role of Miocene-Pleistocene Environmental Change in Diversification of the Genus Hypoclinemus Chabanaud, 1928.Integrative zoology · 2026Article
- Triplet-based species tree estimation: Sensitivity to gene tree rooting (or lack thereof).PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop: Lessons From the Past 15 Years.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Mesopolyploidy as a taxonomic clade marker for Brassica and relatives (tribe Brassiceae).Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Murbeckiella is dead, long live Oreophyton: origin and systematics of tribe Oreophytoneae (Brassicaceae).Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Towards whole plastome phylogeography: resolving small genetic distances among European Arnica montana L. with the PlastidPipeline.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A tale of two lineages: comparative biogeography across the Southern Cone of two South American Carex (Cyperaceae) groups.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Morphological Divergence Without Genetic Differentiation in Widely Distributed ChineseBiology · 2026Article
- Review
- The monophyly of Nycteria and Polychromophilus parasites: a missing piece in the evolution of malaria and other Haemosporida.Malaria journal · 2026Article
- A single species, different repeatomes? Genomic plasticity in Passiflora foetida L. complex and comparative insights across the subgenus Passiflora.Chromosome research : an international journal on the molecular, supramolecular and evolutionary aspects of chromosome biology · 2026Article
2,305 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In phylogenetics, the unrooted model of phylogeny and the strict molecular clock model are two extremes of a continuum. Despite their dominance in phylogenetic inference, it is evident that both are biologically unrealistic and that the real evolutionary process lies between these two extremes. Fortunately, intermediate models employing relaxed molecular clocks have been described. These models open the gate to a new field of "relaxed phylogenetics." Here we introduce a new approach to performing relaxed phylogenetic analysis. We describe how it can be used to estimate phylogenies and divergence times in the face of uncertainty in evolutionary rates and calibration times. Our approach also provides a means for measuring the clocklikeness of datasets and comparing this measure between different genes and phylogenies. We find no significant rate autocorrelation among branches in three large datasets, suggesting that autocorrelated models are not necessarily suitable for these data. In addition, we place these datasets on the continuum of clocklikeness between a strict molecular clock and the alternative unrooted extreme. Finally, we present analyses of 102 bacterial, 106 yeast, 61 plant, 99 metazoan, and 500 primate alignments. From these we conclude that our method is phylogenetically more accurate and precise than the traditional unrooted model while adding the ability to infer a timescale to evolution.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.