M. W. Pennell

Maternal investment evolves with larger body size and higher diversification rate in sharks and rays

This study investigates the evolution of reproductive strategies in sharks and rays, finding that live-bearing and maternal investment correlate with increased diversification rates and habitat colonization.

Fundamental identifiability limits in molecular epidemiology

This study identifies fundamental limits in phylodynamic inference, showing that epidemiological parameters cannot be uniquely determined from viral phylogenetic data alone.

Why extinction estimates from extant phylogenies are so often zero

The paper explains why extinction rate estimates from extant phylogenies often show zero, due to congruent diversification scenarios and model constraints.

A General Birth-Death-Sampling Model for Epidemiology and Macroevolution

The paper unifies various birth-death-sampling models into a general framework, showing they are special cases of a more general model and provides a method to derive likelihoods for complex scenarios.

Phylogenies of extant species are consistent with an infinite array of diversification histories

The paper shows that extant timetrees cannot uniquely determine diversification scenarios, as infinitely many scenarios can generate the same tree.

Macroevolutionary diversification rates show time-dependency

The paper shows speciation and extinction rates scale with clade age, finding faster rates in younger clades and demonstrating this is not due to statistical artifacts.

The choice of tree prior and molecular clock does not substantially affect phylogenetic inferences of diversification rates

This study evaluates how tree priors and molecular clocks affect diversification rate estimates in Bayesian phylogenetics, finding minimal impact when data are informative and substitution rates are low-to-moderate.

Rethinking phylogenetic comparative methods

This paper critiques traditional phylogenetic comparative methods and proposes a new framework to address issues with unreplicated evolutionary events in comparative biology.