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

3.
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

4.
Bayesian
analyses
Simulated
matrices
Character states & ordering
Branch lengths &
per character rate
Morphological
matrix
Morphological
phylogenies

5.
Multiple characters on same tooth
Expected to result in correlations

6.
Occlusion
Correlations, also anti-correlations from complementary patterns

7.
Development forcing dependency
Kangas et al. 2004

8.
Dávalos et al. 2014 Syst Biol

9.
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