SynthesisSystematic biology2017
Dental Data Perform Relatively Poorly in Reconstructing Mammal Phylogenies: Morphological Partitions Evaluated with Molecular Benchmarks.
Synthesis in Systematic biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Phylogenetic congruence, conflict and consilience between molecular and morphological data.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Pooled it
- Toward a Comprehensive Anatomical Matrix for Crown Birds: Phylogenetic Insights from the Pectoral Girdle and Forelimb Skeleton.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Male and female contributions to diversity among birdwing butterfly images.Communications biology · 2024Article
- The decline and fall of the mammalian stem.PeerJ · 2024Article
- Quantifying the effects of exceptional fossil preservation on the global availability of phylogenetic data in deep time.PloS one · 2024Article
- Fossilization can mislead analyses of phenotypic disparity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Multiple modes of inference reveal less phylogenetic signal in marsupial basicranial shape compared with the rest of the cranium.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Phylogenetic Signal and Bias in Paleontology.Systematic biology · 2022Article
- Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Developmental influence on evolutionary rates and the origin of placental mammal tooth complexity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Not your father's homodonty-stress, tooth shape, and the functional homodont.Journal of anatomy · 2020Article
- Craniodental and Postcranial Characters of Non-Avian Dinosauria Often Imply Different Trees.Systematic biology · 2020Article
- Tip dating supports novel resolutions of controversial relationships among early mammals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Article
- Article
- Virtual endocranial and inner ear endocasts of the Paleocene 'condylarth' Chriacus: new insight into the neurosensory system and evolution of early placental mammals.Journal of anatomy · 2020Article
- The first North AmericanPeerJ · 2019Article
- Improvements in the fossil record may largely resolve current conflicts between morphological and molecular estimates of mammal phylogeny.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Parsimony, not Bayesian analysis, recovers more stratigraphically congruent phylogenetic trees.Biology letters · 2018Article
- Differences between hard and soft phylogenetic data.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Phylogenetic trees underpin reconstructions of evolutionary history and tests of evolutionary hypotheses. They are inferred from both molecular and morphological data, yet the relative value of morphology has been questioned in this context due to perceived homoplasy, developmental linkage, and nonindependence of characters. Nevertheless, fossil data are limited to incomplete subsets of preserved morphology, and different regions are treated as equivalent. Through meta-analysis of 40 data sets, we show here that the dental and osteological characters of mammals convey significantly different phylogenetic signals, and that osteological characters are significantly more compatible with molecular trees. Furthermore, the application of simplified paleontological filters (retaining only dental data) results in significantly greater loss of phylogenetic signal than random character ablation. Although the mammal fossil record is largely comprised of teeth, dental data alone are generally found to be less reliable for phylogenetic reconstruction given their incongruence with osteological and molecular data. These findings highlight the need for rigorous meta-analyses of distributions of homoplasy in morphological data. These tests, and consequent refinements to phylogenetic analyses that they permit, promise to improve the quality of all macroevolutionary studies that hinge on accurate trees. [Homoplasy; Mammalia; morphology; osteology; phylogeny; teeth.
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.