TY - JOUR
T1 - A methodological investigation of hominoid craniodental morphology and phylogenetics
AU - Bjarnason, Alexander
AU - Chamberlain, Andrew T.
AU - Lockwood, Charles A.
N1 - A.B. also thanks the Department of Anthropology at University College London, the Central Research Fund of the University of London, and the Graduate school of University College London for a Major Research Project grant, all of which have contributed towards funding this project and earlier presentation of our findings. A.C. acknowledges the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.Major changes have been made to this article with additional data collection and phylogenetic analysis since the death of Charles Lockwood. Any errors, mistakes, or omissions are solely the responsibility of the remaining authors. We thank Roshna Wunderlich, John Lynch, Bill Kimbel, Christophe Soligo, and Sarah Elton for comments, help, and advice pertaining to the completion of this manuscript. Brian Villmoare was especially helpful, and generous with his time, in particular helping A.B. with temporal bone landmarks. We also thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor for insightful comments and advice. For the additional data collection of temporal bone data in Hylobates we thank Paula Jenkins, Louise Tomsett, and Roberto Portela Miguez at Natural History Museum London, and Marcia Ponce de León and Tea Jashashvili at the Anthropological Institute of the University of Zürich.
PY - 2011/1
Y1 - 2011/1
N2 - The evolutionary relationships of extant great apes and humans have been largely resolved by molecular studies, yet morphology-based phylogenetic analyses continue to provide conflicting results. In order to further investigate this discrepancy we present bootstrap clade support of morphological data based on two quantitative datasets, one dataset consisting of linear measurements of the whole skull from 5 hominoid genera and the second dataset consisting of 3D landmark data from the temporal bone of 5 hominoid genera, including 11 sub-species. Using similar protocols for both datasets, we were able to 1) compare distance-based phylogenetic methods to cladistic parsimony of quantitative data converted into discrete character states, 2) vary outgroup choice to observe its effect on phylogenetic inference, and 3) analyse male and female data separately to observe the effect of sexual dimorphism on phylogenies. Phylogenetic analysis was sensitive to methodological decisions, particularly outgroup selection, where designation of Pongo as an outgroup and removal of Hylobates resulted in greater congruence with the proposed molecular phylogeny. The performance of distance-based methods also justifies their use in phylogenetic analysis of morphological data. It is clear from our analyses that hominoid phylogenetics ought not to be used as an example of conflict between the morphological and molecular, but as an example of how outgroup and methodological choices can affect the outcome of phylogenetic analysis. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
AB - The evolutionary relationships of extant great apes and humans have been largely resolved by molecular studies, yet morphology-based phylogenetic analyses continue to provide conflicting results. In order to further investigate this discrepancy we present bootstrap clade support of morphological data based on two quantitative datasets, one dataset consisting of linear measurements of the whole skull from 5 hominoid genera and the second dataset consisting of 3D landmark data from the temporal bone of 5 hominoid genera, including 11 sub-species. Using similar protocols for both datasets, we were able to 1) compare distance-based phylogenetic methods to cladistic parsimony of quantitative data converted into discrete character states, 2) vary outgroup choice to observe its effect on phylogenetic inference, and 3) analyse male and female data separately to observe the effect of sexual dimorphism on phylogenies. Phylogenetic analysis was sensitive to methodological decisions, particularly outgroup selection, where designation of Pongo as an outgroup and removal of Hylobates resulted in greater congruence with the proposed molecular phylogeny. The performance of distance-based methods also justifies their use in phylogenetic analysis of morphological data. It is clear from our analyses that hominoid phylogenetics ought not to be used as an example of conflict between the morphological and molecular, but as an example of how outgroup and methodological choices can affect the outcome of phylogenetic analysis. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.
KW - Cladistics
KW - Distance-based
KW - Hominoid
KW - Morphometrics
KW - Phylogeny
U2 - 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.08.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.08.005
M3 - Article
SN - 0047-2484
VL - 60
SP - 47
EP - 57
JO - Journal of Human Evolution
JF - Journal of Human Evolution
IS - 1
ER -