taxa2phylo: Convert Simulated Taxon Data into a Phylogeny

Description

Converts temporal and ancestor-descendant relationships of taxa into a time-scaled phylogeny

Usage

taxa2phylo(taxad, obs_time = NULL, plot = FALSE)

Arguments

taxad

A five-column matrix of taxonomic data, as output by simFossilTaxa

obs_time

A vector of per-taxon times of observation which must be in the same order of taxa as in the object taxad; if NULL, the LADs (column 4) in taxad2 are used

plot

Plot the resulting phylogeny?

Value

The resulting phylogeny with branch lengths is output as an object of class phylo. This function will output trees with the element $root.time, which is the time of the root divergence in absolute time. The tip labels are the rownames from the simulation input; see simFossiltaxa documentation for details.

Details

As described in the documentation for taxa2cladogram, the relationships among morphotaxa in the fossil record are difficult to describe in terms of traditional phylogenies. One possibility is to arbitrarily choose particular instantaneous points of time in the range of some taxa and describe the time-scaled relationships of the populations present at those dates. This is the tactic used by taxa2phylo. By default, the dates selected ('obs-time' argument) are the last occurances of the taxon, so a simple use of this function will produce a time-scaled tree which describes the relaitonships of the populations present at the last occurance of each taxon in the sampled data. Alternatively, obs_time can be supplied with different dates within the taxon ranges. All data relating to when static morpho-taxa appear or disappear in the record is lost; branching points will be the actual time of speciation, which (under budding) will often be in the middle of the temporal range of a taxon. Cryptic taxa are not dropped or merged as can be done with taxa2cladogram. The purpose of taxa2phylo is to obtain the 'true' pattern of evolution for the observation times, independent of what we might actually be able to recover, for the purpose of comparing in simulation analyses. As with many functions in the paleotree library, absolute time is always decreasing, i.e. the present day is zero.

Examples

Run this code

set.seed(444)
taxa<-simFossilTaxa(p=0.1,q=0.1,nruns=1,mintaxa=20,maxtaxa=30,maxtime=1000,maxExtant=0)
#let's use taxa2cladogram to get the 'ideal' cladogram of the taxa
tree<-taxa2phylo(taxa)
phyloDiv(tree)

#now a phylogeny with tips placed at the apparent time of extinction for each taxon
rangesCont<-sampleRanges(taxa,r=0.5)
tree<-taxa2phylo(taxa,obs_time=rangesCont[,2])
phyloDiv(tree,drop.ZLB=FALSE)
#note that it drops taxa which were never sampled!

#testing with cryptic speciation
taxaCrypt<-simFossilTaxa(p=0.1,q=0.1,prop.cryptic=0.5,nruns=1,mintaxa=10,maxtaxa=20,
    maxtime=1000,maxExtant=0)
treeCrypt<-taxa2phylo(taxaCrypt)
layout(1)
plot(treeCrypt)