Trees, branches and (square) roots: why evolutionary relatedness is not linearly related to functional distance

摘要: Summary An increasingly popular practice in community ecology is to use the evolutionary distance among interacting species as a proxy for their overall functional similarity. At core of this approach implicit, yet poorly recognized, assumption that trait dissimilarity increases linearly with divergence time, all time considered equal. However, given classic Brownian model evolution, we show expected displacement any two taxa more appropriately represented linear function time's square root. In light mismatch between theory and methodology, argue current methods at interface biology often greatly overweight deep relative recent time. An easy solution weighting problem root transformation phylogenetic matrix. Using simulated models evolution assembly, yields considerably higher statistical power, improvements 92% trials. This methodological update likely improve our understanding connection relatedness contemporary ecological processes.