physignal: Assessing phylogenetic signal in morphometric data
Description
Function calculates the degree of phylogenetic signal
from a set of Procrustes-aligned specimens
Usage
physignal(phy, A, iter = 999)
Arguments
phy
A phylogenetic tree of type 'phylo'
A
An array (p x k x n) containing GPA-aligned
coordinates for a set of specimens
iter
Number of iterations for significance
testing
Value
Function returns a list with the following components:
phy.signalThe estimate of phylogenetic signal
pvalueThe significance level of the observed
signal
Details
The function estimates the degree of phylogenetic signal
present in shape data for a given phylogeny based on a
Brownian motion model of evolution. It is assumed that
the landmarks have previously been aligned using
Generalized Procrustes Analysis (GPA) [e.g., with
gpagen]. To assess phylogenetic signal
under alternative models, first consider branch-length
transformations of the phylogeny. Phylogenetic signal is
estimated as the sum of squared changes (SSC) in shape
along all branches of the phylogeny (Klingenberg and
Gidasqewski 2010). Significance testing is found by
permuting the shape data among the tips of the phylogeny.
A plot of the specimens in tangent space with the
phylogeny superimposed is included, and ancestral states
are returned. Note that the method can be slow as
ancestral states must be estimated for every iteration.
References
Klingenberg, C. P., and N. A. Gidaszewski. 2010. Testing
and quantifying phylogenetic signals and homoplasy in
morphometric data. Syst. Biol. 59:245-261.