Three tree priors and five datasets

A study of Indo-European phylogenetics

Bibliographic Data

ID19563334
AuthorsTaraka Rama (0000-0002-4531-6733, University of Oslo, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume8
Issue2
Pages182-218
Publication date2018-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage Dynamics and Change (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2210-5824 • E-ISSN: 2210-5832
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/22105832-00802005
OpenAlexW2895242599
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited9

The age of the root of the Indo-European language family has received much attention since the application of Bayesian phylogenetic methods by Gray and Atkinson (2003). With the application of new models, the root age of the Indo-European family has tended to decrease from an age that supported the Anatolian origin hypothesis to an age that supports the Steppe origin hypothesis (Chang et al., 2015). However, none of the published work in Indo-European phylogenetics has studied the effect of tree priors on phylogenetic analyses of the Indo-European family. In this paper, I intend to fill this gap by exploring the effect of tree priors on different aspects of the Indo-European family’s phylogenetic inference. I apply three tree priors—Uniform, Fossilized Birth-Death ( FBD ), and Coalescent—to five publicly available datasets of the Indo-European language family. I evaluate the posterior distribution of the trees from the Bayesian analysis using Bayes Factor, and find that there is support for the Steppe origin hypothesis in the case of two tree priors. I report the median and 95 % highest posterior density ( HPD ) interval of the root ages for all three tree priors. A model comparison suggests that either the Uniform prior or the FBD prior is more suitable than the Coalescent prior to the datasets belonging to the Indo-European language family

Bayes factor · Bayesian inference · Bayesian probability · Biology · Coalescent theory · Combinatorics · Evolutionary biology · Inference · Phylogenetic tree · Posterior probability · Prior probability · Statistics · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Computer Science · Language and cultural evolution · Mathematics · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Artificial Intelligence