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Comment
. 2015 Oct 27;112(43):E5767-8.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1515451112. Epub 2015 Oct 21.

Reply to Lessios and Marko et al.: Early and progressive migration across the Isthmus of Panama is robust to missing data and biases

Christine D Bacon  1 , Daniele Silvestro  2 , Carlos Jaramillo  3 , Brian Tilston Smith  4 , Prosanta Chakrabarty  5 , Alexandre Antonelli  6
Affiliations
Comment

Reply to Lessios and Marko et al.: Early and progressive migration across the Isthmus of Panama is robust to missing data and biases

Christine D Bacon et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Biotic movements through time across the Isthmus of Panama. Plots show a comparison of results presented by Bacon et al. (3) with the results from new analyses that account for issues raised by Lessios (4) and Marko et al. (5). (A) Rate of events separating marine organisms between the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific ocean, inferred from the data compiled by Bacon et al. (3) and the dataset provided by Lessios (4), where rates were standardized in a range (0,1) to facilitate comparison. (B) Biogeographic events inferred from the analysis of all data (including both marine and terrestrial organisms) reproduced from Bacon et al. (3), compared with migration rates based on 1,000 randomized datasets accounting for the potential systematic bias postulated by Marko et al. (5). In both A and B, statistically significant rate shifts are indicated below the rate curves together with their 95% confidence interval. These analyses show that substantial biotic interchange across the Isthmus of Panama started millions of years earlier than commonly assumed (3.5 Ma; the dashed line in both graphs) and in distinct phases. Our original conclusions (3) therefore remain robust, despite concerns about missing data and biological biases. All images are of organisms that migrated across the Isthmus of Panama region. Images courtesy of STRI database.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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    1. Montes C, et al. Middle Miocene closure of the Central American Seaway. Science. 2015;348(6231):226–229. - PubMed
    1. Bacon CD, et al. Biological evidence supports an early and complex emergence of the Isthmus of Panama. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2015;112(19):6110–6115. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lessios HA. Appearance of an early closure of the Isthmus of Panama is the product of biased inclusion of data in the metaanalysis. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2015;112:E5765. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Marko PB, Eytan RI, Knowlton N. Do large molecular sequence divergences imply an early closure of the Isthmus of Panama? Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2015;112:E5766. - PMC - PubMed

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