PRF: Comparative Method/Phylogenetic Analysis Techniques and Methods for Estimating Expected Amounts of Phenotypic Change

最近，提出了关于使用 比较或种间数据与标准统计 分析。 在系统发育相关中测量的性状值 在统计学上，生物群体之间并不是相互独立的 其他的，必须纠正相关程度。 在 此外，关于哪种类型的 进化统计（Evolutionary Statistics） 是比较生物学家最感兴趣的 虽然 已经提出了几种解决这些问题的方案， 了解所提出的解决方案如何相互关联。 所有提出的方法都要求， 生物体和估计的预期变化量， 每一个特征都是可用的。 因为通常很难获得 准确估计预期的性格变化量， 已经提出了几种技术来推断该信息 使用独立的时间估计或使用比较 数据本身。 同样，我们对这位亲戚所知甚少 各种技术的能力。 在这项研究中，P.I. 将结合数学和计算机模拟 技术来比较两种分析的可用方法 比较数据和估计预期变化量 它们的生物学和统计学特性。

Recently, several issues have been raised concerning the use of comparative or interspecific data with standard statistical analyses. Trait values measured in phylogenetically related groups of organisms are not statistically independent of each other, and must be corrected for degree of relatedness. In addition, there is still much debate concerning which type of evolutionary relationships (and thus, evolutionary statistics) are of greatest interest to comparative biologists. Although several solutions to these problems have been proposed, little is known about how the proposed solutions relate to one another. All of the proposed methods require that the phylogeny of the organisms and an estimate of the expected amount of change for each trait be available. As it is often difficult to obtain accurate estimates of expected amounts of character change, several techniques have been proposed to infer this information using independent estimates of time or by using the comparative data themselves. Again, little is known about the relative abilities of the various techniques. During this study the P.I. will use a combination of mathematical and computer simulation techniques to compare the available methods for both analyzing comparative data and estimating expected amounts of change in terms of both their biological and statistical properties.