Comparative Methods on Phylogenetic Networks

• Activity Number: 514 - Advanced Statistical Inference for Stochastic Models of Evolutionary Biology
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics
• Author(s): Claudia Solis-Lemus* and Cecile Ane and Paul Bastide and Ricardo Kriebel and William Sparks
• Companies: Emory University and University of Wisconsin-Madison and Rega Institute, KU Leuven and University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Keywords: phylogenetic networks; comparative methods; transgressive evolution

Abstract

Phylogenetic network inference plays an important role in the reconstruction of the tree of life, given the widespread gene flow among different organisms. However, there are many challenges in network reconstruction and interpretation such as identifiability issues, difficulties to summarize network uncertainty, and interpretation issues related to network-thinking. In this talk, I will start by explaining the current difficulties in network inference and by highlighting new methods to address them. Later, I will describe new comparative methods applied to phylogenetic networks. The goal of Phylogenetic Comparative Methods (PCMs) is to study the distribution of quantitative traits among related species. In this talk, I will provide extensions of standard PCM tools to networks, such as phylogenetic regression or ANOVA, ancestral trait reconstruction, and Pagel's lambda test of phylogenetic signal. These new tools are implemented in the open-source Julia package PhyloNetworks.