ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2021
Fossils improve phylogenetic analyses of morphological characters.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 2 of them syntheses 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
31 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Building phenotypic character matrices for phylogenetic inference: exploration of 35 years of practice.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Pooled it
- Phylogenetic congruence, conflict and consilience between molecular and morphological data.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Pooled it
- Article
- Extroparvum occidentale gen. et sp. nov. and the Cretaceous diversification of Lauraceae.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- The endocarp evolution of Cissampelideae (Menispermaceae): integrating extant and fossil species.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- Revisiting the enigmatic Cheirolepidiaceae: origins, phylogenetic relationships, and a new whole-plant concept.Annals of botany · 2026Article
- An Evolving View of Character Macroevolution.Systematic biology · 2026Review
- Practical Guide and Review of Fossil Tip-Dating in Phylogenetics.Systematic biology · 2026Review
- DOO: integrated multi-omics resources for deep ocean organisms.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Geologic history explains freshwater fish species richness across the conterminous USA.Global ecology and biogeography : a journal of macroecology · 2025Article
- Combining fossil taxa with and without morphological data improves dated phylogenetic analyses.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Can Macroevolution Inform Contemporary Extinction Risk?Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Toward a Comprehensive Anatomical Matrix for Crown Birds: Phylogenetic Insights from the Pectoral Girdle and Forelimb Skeleton.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Identification of the mode of evolution in incomplete carbonate successions.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Bayesian Total-Evidence Dating Revisits Sloth Phylogeny and Biogeography: A Cautionary Tale on Morphological Clock Analyses.Systematic biology · 2024Article
- A review of fossil scorpion higher systematics.PeerJ · 2024Review
- Article
- A Morrison stem gekkotan reveals gecko evolution and Jurassic biogeography.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Handling Logical Character Dependency in Phylogenetic Inference: Extensive Performance Testing of Assumptions and Solutions Using Simulated and Empirical Data.Systematic biology · 2023Article
- From fossils to mind.Communications biology · 2023Review
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fossils provide our only direct window into evolutionary events in the distant past. Incorporating them into phylogenetic hypotheses of living clades can help time-calibrate divergences, as well as elucidate macroevolutionary dynamics. However, the effect fossils have on phylogenetic reconstruction from morphology remains controversial. The consequences of explicitly incorporating the stratigraphic ages of fossils using tip-dated inference are also unclear. Here, we use simulations to evaluate the performance of inference methods across different levels of fossil sampling and missing data. Our results show that fossil taxa improve phylogenetic analysis of morphological datasets, even when highly fragmentary. Irrespective of inference method, fossils improve the accuracy of phylogenies and increase the number of resolved nodes. They also induce the collapse of ancient and highly uncertain relationships that tend to be incorrectly resolved when sampling only extant taxa. Furthermore, tip-dated analyses under the fossilized birth-death process outperform undated methods of inference, demonstrating that the stratigraphic ages of fossils contain vital phylogenetic information. Fossils help to extract true phylogenetic signals from morphology, an effect that is mediated by both their distinctive morphology and their temporal information, and their incorporation in total-evidence phylogenetics is necessary to faithfully reconstruct evolutionary history.
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.