Testing molecular date estimates using an ecological and vicariant case study in treefrogs: The Geological‐Ecological Molecular Calibration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Aim To date a vicariant event through the mutualistic relationship of a hylid frog and its bromeliad host found across two isolated mountain ranges as part of an island–continental split and to use this information to calibrate a molecular dating analysis of hylids. Location South America. Time Period Pliocene. Major Taxa Studied Treefrogs, Arboranae. Methods Pliocene tectonic movements sank a portion of a mountain range that connected present‐day Trinidad (island) and northern Venezuela, eventually isolating populations of the golden tree frog Phytotriades auratus and its host bromeliad Glomeropitcairnia erectiflora on both sides of a saltwater barrier. We estimated the submersion rate timing of the vicariant event, then employed ecological niche modelling to establish the distribution of the frog and its host to the Pliocene. We generated nucleotide sequence data for the hylid on each side of the marine barrier and proposed a biogeographic calibration for the split between populations. Using Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, we evaluated the impact of incorporating this biogeographic calibration on estimates of treefrog divergence times. Results A relatively continuous, high‐elevation mountain range existed before the Pliocene and the opening of the Gulf of Paria (4.45 ± 0.85 Ma). Phytotriades auratus and G. erectiflora would have been distributed across the Paria and Northern Range mountains as a single population since the Pliocene. Divergence times among treefrogs (Arboranae) were older than those inferred using fossil calibrations alone, with mean age estimates for subfamilies and genera being ~2 and ~1.2 million years older, respectively. Main Conclusions Our study presents a biogeographic calibration based on a vicariant model that connects the evolution of the populations of a hylid through geology and ecological data. The implementation of this date as a molecular clock calibration reduces the uncertainty in date estimates for the shallower nodes in the phylogeny of Arboranae.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".