Davalos talk at Evolution 2014, Raleigh, North Carolina

1. Biting into it: Occlusion and
development force correlations and
anticorrelations in dental characters
Liliana Davalos, Omar Warsi, Edward Li, Samuel
Gochman, Nancy Simmons, Paul Velazco
Evolution Meetings, 22 June 2014

2. Key assumption: independence
de Queiroz & Gatesy 2007

4. Compared to
sequences
• Large representation of
0 dissimilarity
• Perhaps similarity
arises from slower rates
• Not from lack of
independence
Dávalos et al. 2014 Syst Biol

5. Bayesian
analyses
Simulated
matrices
Character states & ordering
Branch lengths &
per character rate
Morphological
matrix
Morphological
phylogenies

6. Multiple characters on same tooth
Expected to result in correlations

7. Occlusion
Correlations, also anti-correlations from complementary patterns

8. Development forcing dependency
Kangas et al. 2004

9. Dávalos et al. 2014 Syst Biol

15. Conclusion: rife with
dependency
• All enrich for identical signal
and anticorrelations
• Being on the same tooth
• Contributes more to
identical signal
• Occlusion
• Being in dental series
• Complex pattern as distance
in toothrow increases
Picture by Elizabeth Clare