Ep. Martins, PHYLOGENIES AND COMPARATIVE DATA, MICROEVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE, Philosophical transactions-Royal Society of London. Biological sciences, 349(1327), 1995, pp. 85-91
As species evolve along a phylogenetic tree, their phenotypes diverge.
We expect closely related species to retain some phenotypic similarit
ies owing to their shared evolutionary histories. The degree of simila
rity depends both on the phylogeny and on the detailed evolutionary ch
anges that accumulate each generation. In this study, I review a gener
al framework that can be used to translate between macroevolutionary p
atterns and the underlying microevolutionary process by comparing the
observed relationships among measured species phenotypes and the expec
ted relationship structure due to the phylogeny and underlying models
of phenotypic evolution. I then show how the framework can be used to
compare methods used (1) to reconstruct phylogenies, (2) to correct co
mparative data for phylogenetic non-independence, and (3) to infer det
ails of the microevolutionary process from interspecific data and a ph
ylogeny. Use of this framework and a microevolutionary perspective on
the analysis of interspecific data opens up new fields of inquiry and
many new uses for phylogenies and comparative data.