The effect of intraspecific sample size on type I and type II error rates in comparative studies |
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Authors: | Harmon Luke J Losos Jonathan B |
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Affiliation: | Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USA. harmon@zoology.ubc.ca |
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Abstract: | Comparative studies have increased greatly in number in recent years due to advances in statistical and phylogenetic methodologies. For these studies, a trade-off often exists between the number of species that can be included in any given study and the number of individuals examined per species. Here, we describe a simple simulation study examining the effect of intraspecific sample size on statistical error in comparative studies. We find that ignoring measurement error has no effect on type I error of nonphylogenetic analyses, but can lead to increased type I error under some circumstances when using independent contrasts. We suggest using ANOVA to evaluate the relative amounts of within- and between-species variation when considering a phylogenetic comparative study. If within-species variance is particularly large and intraspecific sample sizes small, then either larger sample sizes or comparative methods that account for measurement error are necessary. |
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Keywords: | Independent contrasts measurement error phylogenetic comparative method population variation statistics |
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