Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29982825›Full record

ArticleSystematic biology2019

The Spectre of Too Many Species.

Adam D Leaché, Tianqi Zhu, Bruce Rannala, Ziheng Yang

Open access · hybridAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Systematic biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
65citing papers in PubMed
24.2field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

65 citing papers in PubMed, 280 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Review
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Aquifer-Mediated Speciation in Cave-Adapted Fishes.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026
    Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Distinguishing species boundaries from geographic variation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
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  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
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  18. Article
  19. Article
  20. Article

5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.

Adam D LeachéDepartment of Biology & Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
Tianqi ZhuNational Center for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Bruce RannalaDepartment of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, USA.
Ziheng YangNational Center for Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science · CNUniversity of California, Davis · USUniversity of Washington · US

Funding

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council BB/P006493/1
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Recent simulation studies examining the performance of Bayesian species delimitation as implemented in the bpp program have suggested that bpp may detect population splits but not species divergences and that it tends to over-split when data of many loci are analyzed. Here, we confirm these results and provide the mathematical justifications. We point out that the distinction between population and species splits made in the protracted speciation model (PSM) has no influence on the generation of gene trees and sequence data, which explains why no method can use such data to distinguish between population splits and speciation. We suggest that the PSM is unrealistic as its mechanism for assigning species status assumes instantaneous speciation, contradicting prevailing taxonomic practice. We confirm the suggestion, based on simulation, that in the case of speciation with gene flow, Bayesian model selection as implemented in bpp tends to detect population splits when the amount of data (the number of loci) increases. We discuss the use of a recently proposed empirical genealogical divergence index (gdi) for species delimitation and illustrate that parameter estimates produced by a full likelihood analysis as implemented in bpp provide much more reliable inference under the gdi than the approximate method phrapl. We distinguish between Bayesian model selection and parameter estimation and suggest that the model selection approach is useful for identifying sympatric cryptic species, while the parameter estimation approach may be used to implement empirical criteria for determining species status among allopatric populations.

Indexed as

Genetic SpeciationModels, BiologicalBayes TheoremClassificationComputer Simulation

Identifiers

PMID29982825
PMCPMC6292489
OpenAlexW2790360203

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.