Penguins, Petrels, and Parsimony: Does Cladistic Analysis of Behavior Reflect Seabird Phylogeny?

Abstract

Whether or not behavior accurately reflects evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) has been hotly debated by ethologists and comparative psychologists. Previous studies attempting to resolve this question have generally lacked a quantitative, phylogenetic approach. In this study we used behavior and life-history (BLH) information (72 characters) to generate phylogenetic trees for 18 seabird species (albatrosses, petrels, and penguins). We compared these trees with trees obtained from isozyme electrophoretic analysis of blood proteins (15 loci and 98 electromorphs) and partial mitochondrial 12S ribosomal DNA sequences (381 base pairs). Cladistic analysis of the BLH data set generated three MP trees (tree length = 243, CI = 0.52, RI = 0.57) with significant cladistic structure. The BLH characters were classified into four types (foraging, agonistic, reproductive, and life history) and levels of homoplasy for each type were measured. No significant differences were found among these categories. The BLH trees were shown to be significantly more congruent with the electrophoretic and 12S sequence trees than expected by chance. This indicates that seabird BLH data contains phylogenetic signal. Areas of incongruence between BLH trees and a phylogeny generated by combining the data sets were predicted to result from ecological constraints that did not covary with phylogeny. These predictions were supported by the results of a concentrated changes test. This study found that this BLH data set was no more homoplasious than molecular data and that BLH trees were significantly congruent with molecular trees.

Does behavior reflect phylogeny in swiftlets (Aves: Apodidae)? A test using cytochrome b mitochondrial DNA sequences.

“…The use of behavioral traits as phylogenetic characters has received increasing support in recent years (16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21). Although nest structure and placement are species specific behavioral traits, our study suggests that these traits are unlikely to be phylogenetically informative in swiftlets.…”

“…However, recent studies (17)(18)(19)(20)(21) show that behavioral characters contain useful phylogenetic information. Hence, the reliance of swiftlet taxonomists on these kinds of characters is not unreasonable a priori.…”

Cladogenesis and Loss of the Marine Life-History Phase in Freshwater Galaxiid Fishes (Osmeriformes: Galaxiidae)

“…However, this assumes that gains and losses are equally likely. It has often been suggested that complex characters are more readily lost than gained (e.g., Paterson et al 1995). Our favored interpretation of galaxiid evolution rests on the contention that diadromy, once lost, is unlikely to be regained.…”

Strong character incongruence and character choice in phylogeny of sea stars of the Asterinidae

“…Nucleotide characters are especially useful where phenotypic homologies are not clear (Raff et al 1994;Aguinaldo et al 1997;McHugh 1997) or few shared derived phenotypic states can be observed (Avise et al 1994). Molecular and phenotypic data often give results that are congruent or at least not strongly conflicting (Eernisse et al 1992;Rumbak et al 1994;Lafay et al 1995;Paterson et al 1995;Reid et al 1996), and combining these character types may allow the inclusion of fossil or other taxa for which molecular data are unavailable (e.g., Wiens 1998). The total evidence approach has sometimes been cautiously extended to include phenotypic characters from marine invertebrate gametes, embryos, and larvae (Reid 1990;Rouse & Fitzhugh 1994;Reid et al 1996;Wray 1996).…”