Figure 8

Tests of phylogenetic conservatism in life form and geographic distribution. Comparison of the minimal number of steps required to reconstruct life form and geographic distribution on a sample of 1000 simulated trees (generated by keeping the tree topology as in the Bayesian consensus, but randomly shuffling character states) with 1000 empirical trees (randomly chosen from the post burn-in Bayesian sample). (a) Simulated results for life form; (b) empirical results for life form; (c) simulated results for geographic distribution; and (d) empirical results for geographic distribution. For both characters, the observed values fall outside the lower percentiles of the simulated curves (indicated by the red lines in (a) and (c); P < 0.001), indicating that both life form and geographic distribution are phylogenetically conservative.