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MBE Advance Access published online on March 27, 2009
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp062
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Research Article

A permutation test of host-parasite cospeciation

Kerstin Hommola1, Judith E. Smith2, Yang Qiu2 and Walter R. Gilks1

1 Department of Statistics, School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
2 Faculty of Biological Sciences, Institute for Integrative and Comparative Biology, University of Leeds, Miall Building, Clarendon Way, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

E-mail: kerstin{at}maths.leeds.ac.uk (K.H.)

Received for publication December 26, 2008. Revision received March 3, 2009. Accepted for publication March 12, 2009.

We introduce a statistical method which explores host-parasite coevolution by testing the null hypothesis that hosts and their associated parasites evolved independently. This test is simple and intuitive, and involves only suitable randomization of the observed data. It is not even necessary to construct host and parasite phylogenetic trees, as the test can be performed directly on distance matrices. Statistical power of the test was evaluated using simulated data consistent with the alternative hypothesis of cospeciation. Results were compared to the method of Mantel (1967) and the ParaFit method of Legendre et al. (2002). We observed that our method has greater power overall and thus a higher ability to detect cospeciation in closely related host-parasite systems. Our test was also successful when applied to the pocket-gopher and chewing-lice system.

Key Words: cospeciation • coevolution • host-parasite • permutation test • hypothesis test • statistical power • simulation


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