Comment on "Evolutionary trade-offs, Pareto optimality, and the geometry of phenotype space"

Abstract

Shoval et al. (Reports, 1 June 2012, p. 1157) showed how configurations of phenotypes may identify tasks that trade off with each other, using randomizations assuming independence of data points. I argue that this assumption may not be correct for most and possibly all examples and led to pseudoreplication and inflated significance levels. Improved statistical testing is necessary to assess how the theory applies to empirical data.