Species age, the elapsed time since origination, can give insight into how species longevity might influence eco-evolutionary dynamics, which has been hypothesized to influence extinction risk. Traditionally, species' ages have been estimated from fossil records. However, numerous studies have recently used the branch lengths of time-calibrated phylogenies as estimates of the ages of extant species. This approach poses problems because phylogenetic trees only contain direct information about species identity at the tips and not along the branches. Here, we show that incomplete taxon sampling, extinction and different assumptions about speciation modes can significantly alter the relationship between true species age and phylogenetic branch lengths, leading to high error rates. We found that these biases can lead to erroneous interpretations of eco-evolutionary patterns derived from comparing phylogenetic age and other traits, such as extinction risk.

中文翻译：

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从系统发育树估计物种年龄的挑战


物种年龄，即自起源以来所经过的时间，可以让我们深入了解物种寿命如何影响生态进化动态，而生态进化动态被假设会影响灭绝风险。传统上，物种的年龄是根据化石记录来估计的。然而，许多研究最近使用时间校准的系统发育的分支长度来估计现存物种的年龄。这种方法会带来问题，因为系统发育树仅包含有关物种身份的直接信息，而不是沿着分支。在这里，我们表明，不完整的分类单元采样、灭绝和对物种形成模式的不同假设可以显着改变真实物种年龄和系统发育分支长度之间的关系，导致高错误率。我们发现，这些偏差可能会导致对通过比较系统发育年龄和其他特征（例如灭绝风险）得出的生态进化模式的错误解释。