ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
Phylogenetic tests for evolutionary innovation: the problematic link between key innovations and exceptional diversification.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 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
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Physiology mediates transcontinental radiations of freshwater fishes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The convergent evolution of the pelvic suction cup: A unique key innovation in spiny-finned fishes.Science advances · 2026Article
- Echoes of Evolution in Holocentridae: Harmony Between Phylogeny, Morphology and Acoustics.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Article
- Review
- Transgressive hybrids as hopeful holobionts.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Key Adaptive Trait Promotes Contrasting Modes of Diversification in a Bivalve Clade.Evolutionary biology · 2025Article
- New beginnings for dead ends: polyploidy, -SSE models and the dead-end hypothesis.Annals of botany · 2024Review
- The macroevolutionary dynamics of pharyngognathy in fishes fail to support the key innovation hypothesis.Nature communications · 2024Article
- RRmorph-a new R package to map phenotypic evolutionary rates and patterns on 3D meshes.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Bathymetric evolution of black corals through deep time.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Key innovations and the diversification of Hymenoptera.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Evolutionary models demonstrate rapid and adaptive diversification of Australo-Papuan pythons.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Macroevolution in axial morphospace: innovations accompanying the transition to marine environments in elapid snakes.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Decoupling of sexual signals and their underlying morphology facilitates rapid phenotypic diversification.Evolution letters · 2022Article
- Transcriptome-based Phylogeny of the Semi-aquatic Bugs (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Gerromorpha) Reveals Patterns of Lineage Expansion in a Series of New Adaptive Zones.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- The rise of biting during the Cenozoic fueled reef fish body shape diversification.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Nest architecture is linked with ecological success in songbirds.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- Pulled Diversification Rates, Lineages-Through-Time Plots, and Modern Macroevolutionary Modeling.Systematic biology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evolutionary innovation contributes to the spectacular diversity of species and phenotypes across the tree of life. 'Key innovations' are widely operationalized within evolutionary biology as traits that facilitate increased diversification rates, such that lineages bearing the traits ultimately contain more species than closely related lineages lacking the focal trait. In this article, I briefly review the inference, analysis and interpretation of evolutionary innovation on phylogenetic trees. I argue that differential rates of lineage diversification should not be used as the basis for key innovation tests, despite the statistical tractability of such approaches. Under traditional interpretations of the macroevolutionary 'adaptive zone', we should not necessarily expect key innovations to confer faster diversification rates upon lineages that possess them relative to their extant sister clades. I suggest that a key innovation is a trait that allows a lineage to interact with the environment in a fundamentally different way and which, as a result, increases the total diversification-but not necessarily the diversification rate-of the parent clade. Considered alone, branching patterns in phylogenetic trees are poorly suited to the inference of evolutionary innovation due to their inherently low information content with respect to the processes that produce them. However, phylogenies may be important for identifying transformational shifts in ecological and morphological space that are characteristic of innovation at the macroevolutionary scale.This article is part of the themed issue 'Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies'.
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.