Something for nothing? Reconstruction of ancestral character states in asterinid sea star development.

摘要: SUMMARY Traits from early development mapped onto phylogenetic trees can potentially offer insight into the evolutionary history of by inferring states those characters among ancestors at nodes in phylogeny. A key and often-overlooked aspect such mapping is underlying model character evolution. Without a well-supported realistic (“nothing”), ancestral traits might often return results (“something”) that lack sound basis. Here we reconsider challenging case study this area developmental biology: inference for ecological morphological reproduction larval asterinid sea stars. We apply improved analytical methods to an expanded set data states. This analysis shows new generally some independent choice evolution, but specific stars quantitative features (especially relative probabilities different directions change) have important effect on results. suggest caution applying state reconstructions absence independently corroborated highlight need modeling biology.