Information in morphological characters

doi:10.1002/ece3.7874

CORC > 古脊椎动物与古人类研究所 > 中国科学院古脊椎动物与古人类研究所 > 图书馆1

	Information in morphological characters
	Yu, Congyu 3,4,5,6; Jiangzuo, Qigao 2,6; Tschopp, Emanuel 1,6; Wang, Haibing 2,4; Norell, Mark 6
刊名	ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
	2021-08-04
页码	11
关键词	character weighting information theory morphology systematics
ISSN号	2045-7758
DOI	10.1002/ece3.7874
通讯作者	Yu, Congyu(cyu@amnh.org)
英文摘要	The construction of morphological character matrices is central to paleontological systematic study, which extracts paleontological information from fossils. Although the word information has been repeatedly mentioned in a wide array of paleontological systematic studies, its meaning has rarely been clarified nor specifically defined. It is important, however, to establish a standard to measure paleontological information because fossils are hardly complete, rendering the recognition of homologous and homoplastic structures difficult. Here, based on information theory, we show the deep connections between paleontological systematic study and communication system engineering. Information is defined as the decrease of uncertainty and it is the information in morphological characters that allows distinguishing operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and reconstructing evolutionary history. We propose that concepts in communication system engineering such as source coding and channel coding, correspond to the construction of diagnostic features and the entire character matrices in paleontological studies. The two coding strategies should be distinguished following typical communication system engineering, because they serve dual purposes. With character matrices from six different vertebrate groups, we analyzed their information properties including source entropy, mutual information, and channel capacity. Estimation of channel capacity shows character saturation of all matrices in transmitting paleontological information, indicating that, due to the presence of noise, oversampling characters not only increases the burden in character scoring, but also may decrease quality of matrices. We further test the use of information entropy, which measures how informative a variable is, as a character weighting criterion in parsimony-based systematic studies. The results show high consistency with existing knowledge with both good resolution and interpretability.
WOS关键词	PHYLOGENY
WOS研究方向	Environmental Sciences & Ecology ; Evolutionary Biology
语种	英语
出版者	WILEY
WOS记录号	WOS:000680931000001
内容类型	期刊论文
源URL	[http://119.78.100.205/handle/311034/18194]
专题	古脊椎动物与古人类研究所_图书馆1
通讯作者	Yu, Congyu
作者单位	1.Univ Hamburg, Ctr Nat Hist, Hamburg, Germany 2.CAS Ctr Excellence Life & Paleoenvironm, Beijing, Peoples R China 3.Peking Univ, Sch Earth & Space Sci, Key Lab Orogen Belts & Crustal Evolut, Beijing, Peoples R China 4.Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Vertebrate Paleontol & Paleoanthropol, Key Lab Vertebrate Evolut & Human Origins, Beijing, Peoples R China 5.Columbia Univ, Dept Earth & Environm Sci, New York, NY USA 6.Amer Museum Nat Hist, Div Paleontol, New York, NY 10024 USA
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Yu, Congyu,Jiangzuo, Qigao,Tschopp, Emanuel,et al. Information in morphological characters[J]. ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION,2021:11.
APA	Yu, Congyu,Jiangzuo, Qigao,Tschopp, Emanuel,Wang, Haibing,&Norell, Mark.(2021).Information in morphological characters.ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION,11.
MLA	Yu, Congyu,et al."Information in morphological characters".ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION (2021):11.