Phylogenetic signal in bone histology of amniotes revisited

Legendre, L., Le Roy, N., Martinez-Maza, C., Montes, L., Laurin, M., Cubo, J. (2012). Phylogenetic signal in bone histology of amniotes revisited. Zoologica Scripta 00, 000000. There is curretly a debate about the presence of a phylogenetic signal in bone histological data, but very few rigorous tests have fueled the discussions on this topic. Here we performed new analyses using a larger set of seven histological traits and including 25 taxa (nine extinct and sixteen extant taxa), using three methods: the phylogenetic eigenvector regression, the tree length distribution and the regressions on distance matrices. Our results clearly show that the phylogenetic signal in our sample of bone histological characters is strong, even after correcting for multiple testing. Most characters exhibit a significant phylogenetic signal according to at least one of our three tests, with the phylogeny often explaining 20 to 60% of the variation in the histological characters. Thus, we conclude that the phylogenetic comparative method should be systematically used in interspecific analyses of bone histodiversity to avoid problems of non-independence among observations. Corresponding authors: Michel Laurin, CNRS UMR 7207, MNHN, bâtiment de géologie. BC 45. 43 rue Buffon, 75005 Paris, France. E-mail : [email protected] and Jorge Cubo, UPMC, Univ. Paris 06, UMR 7193, ISTeP, 4 place Jussieu, BC 19, F75005, Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7193, ISTeP, 4 place Jussieu, BC 19, F-75005, Paris, France. E-mail: [email protected] Lucas Legendre and Laetitia Montes, UPMC, Univ. Paris 06, UMR 7193, ISTeP, 4 placeJussieu, BC 19, F-75005, Paris, France and CNRS, UMR 7193, ISTeP, 4 place Jussieu, BC 19, F-75005, Paris, France. E-mails: [email protected], [email protected] Nathalie Le Roy, UMR CNRS 6282 Biogeosciences, Univ. Bourgogne, 6 bd Gabriel, Dijon 21000 France. E-mail : [email protected] Cayetana Martinez-Maza, Department of Paleobiology, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales – CSIC, Madrid, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]