Diffusion Models for Phylogenetic Trait Evolution

• Activity Number: 618
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 7, 2014 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Mandev Gill*+ and Marc Suchard
• Companies: University of California, Los Angeles and University of California, Los Angeles
• Keywords: phylogenetics ; genetics ; bayesian inference ; diffusion processes ; evolution ; trees

Abstract

An important issue in statistical phylogenetics is understanding the evolutionary processes giving rise to quantitative characters (such as geographic coordinates or phenotypic traits) associated with molecular sequence data. A promising approach is to model trait evolution as a diffusion process acting on a phylogenetic tree and integrate it with existing Bayesian phylogenetic methods for sequence evolution. Appropriate diffusion models can be selected to model certain phenomena of interest, such as drift and selection. Here, we explore different diffusion models and demonstrate improved inference of key aspects of trait evolution.