Ignoring stratigraphic age uncertainty leads to erroneous estimates of species divergence times under the fossilized birth - death process
Ignoring stratigraphic age uncertainty leads to erroneous estimates of species divergence times under the fossilized birth - death process
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DOI：
10.1098/rspb.2019.0685
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发表时间：
2019-05-01
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Warnock, Rachel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barido-Sottani, Joelle;Aguirre-Fernandez, Gabriel;Warnock, Rachel
化石信息对于估计物种分化时间是必不可少的，并且可以使用简化的出生-死亡（FBD）过程整合到贝叶斯系统发育推断中。古生物学数据的一个重要方面是样本年龄的不确定性，在推断过程中可以以不同的方式处理。最常见的方法是将化石年龄固定在已知年龄间隔内的点估计值上。或者，年龄的不确定性可以通过使用先验知识来合并，然后直接采样化石年龄作为推断的一部分。这项研究提出了一个比较的替代方法处理化石年龄的不确定性分析使用FBD过程。基于模拟，我们发现，固定化石年龄的中点或从地层年龄范围内的随机点导致偏差的分歧时间估计，而采样化石年龄的估计是类似的推断，采用正确的化石年龄。其次，我们使用现存和化石鲸目动物的经验数据集进行了比较，这证实了处理化石年龄不确定性的不同方法导致估计的节点年龄存在很大差异。因此，地层年龄的不确定性不应被忽略的分歧时间估计，而应明确纳入。
Fossil information is essential for estimating species divergence times, and can be integrated into Bayesian phylogenetic inference using the fossilized birth-death (FBD) process. An important aspect of palaeontological data is the uncertainty surrounding specimen ages, which can be handled in different ways during inference. The most common approach is to fix fossil ages to a point estimate within the known age interval. Alternatively, age uncertainty can be incorporated by using priors, and fossil ages are then directly sampled as part of the inference. This study presents a comparison of alternative approaches for handling fossil age uncertainty in analysis using the FBD process. Based on simulations, we find that fixing fossil ages to the midpoint or a random point drawn from within the stratigraphic age range leads to biases in divergence time estimates, while sampling fossil ages leads to estimates that are similar to inferences that employ the correct ages of fossils. Second, we show a comparison using an empirical dataset of extant and fossil cetaceans, which confirms that different methods of handling fossil age uncertainty lead to large differences in estimated node ages. Stratigraphic age uncertainty should thus not be ignored in divergence time estimation and instead should be incorporated explicitly.