The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
ON PHYLOGENETIC TESTS OF IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION
Abstract
"Dollo's law" states that, following loss, a complex trait cannot reevolve in an identical manner. Although the law has previously fallen into disrepute, it has only recently been challenged with statistical phylogenetic methods. We employ simulation studies of an irreversible binary character to show that rejections of Dollo's law based on likelihood-ratio tests of transition rate constraints or on reconstructions of ancestral states are frequently incorrect. We identify two major causes of errors: incorrect assignment of root state frequencies, and neglect of the effect of the character state on rates of speciation and extinction. Our findings do not necessarily overturn the conclusions of phylogenetic studies claiming reversals, but we demonstrate devastating flaws in the methods that are the foundation of all such studies. Furthermore, we show that false rejections of Dollo's law can be reduced by the use of appropriate existing models and model selection procedures. More powerful tests of irreversibility require data beyond phylogenies and character states of extant taxa, and we highlight empirical work that incorporates additional information.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Model selection and multimodel inference: a practical information-theoretic approach.
Guthery, F. S., Burnham, K. P., & Anderson, D. R. (2003) · The Journal of Wildlife Management · doi:10.2307/3802723 · Cited by 41,495
Evolutionary trees from DNA sequences: A maximum likelihood approach.
Felsenstein, J. (1981) · Journal of Molecular Evolution · doi:10.1007/bf01734359 · Cited by 14,571
The Ecology of Adaptive Radiation
Schluter, D. (2000) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198505235.001.0001 · Cited by 4,974
The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology
Harvey, P. H., & Pagel, M. D. (1991) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198546412.001.0001 · Cited by 4,337
A likelihood approach to estimating phylogeny from discrete morphological character data
Lewis, P. O. (2001) · Systematic Biology · doi:10.1080/106351501753462876 · Cited by 2,929
A nonparametric approach to estimating divergence times in the absence of rate constancy.
Sanderson, M. J. (1997) · Molecular Biology and Evolution · doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a025731 · Cited by 1,156
Finarelli, J. A., & Flynn, J. J. (2006) · Systematic Biology · doi:10.1080/10635150500541698 · Cited by 254
Evolution of the fungal self-fertile reproductive life style from self-sterile ancestors
Yun, S.-H., Berbee, M. L., Yoder, O. C., & Turgeon, B. G. (1999) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.96.10.5592 · Cited by 248
INDEPENDENT CONTRASTS SUCCEED WHERE ANCESTOR RECONSTRUCTION FAILS IN A KNOWN BACTERIOPHAGE PHYLOGENY
Oakley, T. H., & Cunningham, C. W. (2000) · Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.0014-3820.2000.tb00042.x · Cited by 166
Cited by
Homoplasy: From Detecting Pattern to Determining Process and Mechanism of Evolution
Wake, D. B., Wake, M. H., & Specht, C. D. (2011) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1188545 · Cited by 431
Phylogenetic Inference of Reciprocal Effects between Geographic Range Evolution and Diversification
Goldberg, E. E., Lancaster, L. T., & Ree, R. H. (2011) · Systematic Biology · doi:10.1093/sysbio/syr046 · Cited by 425
Self-citationPhylogenetic Insights on Adaptive Radiation
Glor, R. E. (2010) · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics · doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.39.110707.173447 · Cited by 353
The ancestral flower of angiosperms and its early diversification
Sauquet, H., von Balthazar, M., Magallón, S., Doyle, J. A., Endress, P. K., Bailes, E. J., Barroso de Morais, E., Bull-Hereñu, K., Carrive, L., Chartier, M., et al. (2017) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms16047 · Cited by 336
Early origin of viviparity and multiple reversions to oviparity in squamate reptiles
Pyron, R. A., & Burbrink, F. T. (2014) · Ecology Letters · doi:10.1111/ele.12168 · Cited by 313
Metadata
- Authors
- Goldberg, E. E., & Igić, B.
- Venue
- Evolution
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2008-11
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 2727-2741
- ISSN
- 0014-3820 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-5646
- OpenAlex
- W2132094475
- Cited by
- 248
- References
- 9
- FWCI
- 13.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: ON PHYLOGENETIC TESTS OF IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2008.00505.x
- The paper
- Goldberg, E. E., & Igić, B. (2008). ON PHYLOGENETIC TESTS OF IRREVERSIBLE EVOLUTION. Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2008.00505.x
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
