(Non-Potluck Post) Interacting Species and Phylogenetic Comparison Methods

 

So I started to write this a couple of weeks ago, before our phylogenetics discussion, but as I'm just finally getting around to posting it, it is also relevant to our discussion this week. 

While we now commonly use phylogenetics to evaluate relationships between sister and more distantly related taxa, I thought this perspective on the lack of solid methods for using phylogenetics to look at species evolutions through the lens of coevolutionary relationships (i.e. varying types of mutualism, predator-prey, host-parasite, etc.) was interesting.

This paper discusses the difficulties of assessing multiple traits/interacting lineages and accounting for each individual phylogeny. The authors use the example of various fig species their fig wasp pollinators to "propose a new statistical procedure for evaluating the covariation between traits for two sets of interacting species while accounting for their respective phylogenies."

A phylogenetic comparative method for evaluating trait coevolution across two phylogenies for sets of interacting species

-- Courtney

Non-Potluck Post

2nd Article from Evolution