ArticleNature communications2021
Ecological and biogeographic drivers of biodiversity cannot be resolved using clade age-richness data.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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10 citing papers in PubMed.
- The nature and prevalence of diversification rate shifts across the Tree of Life.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Diversification patterns of the southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot reveal a novel macroevolutionary pathway to plant hyperdiversity.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- The causes of species richness patterns among clades.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Macroevolutionary constraints on global microbial diversity.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Symbioses shape feeding niches and diversification across insects.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Arrested diversification? The phylogenetic distribution of poorly-diversifying lineages.npj biodiversity · 2022Article
- Evolutionary time and species diversity in aquatic ecosystems worldwide.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Review
- Dispersal ability and its consequences for population genetic differentiation and diversification.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Drivers of diversification in freshwater gastropods vary over deep time.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Evolutionary legacies in contemporary tetrapod imperilment.Ecology letters · 2021Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Estimates of evolutionary diversification rates - speciation and extinction - have been used extensively to explain global biodiversity patterns. Many studies have analyzed diversification rates derived from just two pieces of information: a clade's age and its extant species richness. This "age-richness rate" (ARR) estimator provides a convenient shortcut for comparative studies, but makes strong assumptions about the dynamics of species richness through time. Here we demonstrate that use of the ARR estimator in comparative studies is problematic on both theoretical and empirical grounds. We prove mathematically that ARR estimates are non-identifiable: there is no information in the data for a single clade that can distinguish a process with positive net diversification from one where net diversification is zero. Using paleontological time series, we demonstrate that the ARR estimator has no predictive ability for real datasets. These pathologies arise because the ARR inference procedure yields "point estimates" that have been computed under a saturated statistical model with zero degrees of freedom. Although ARR estimates remain useful in some contexts, they should be avoided for comparative studies of diversification and species richness.
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