That's a really cool question. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that practically, the answer is no (esp when you consider all the issues -- any feasible OU is too simple a model to match reality, tree errors, data errors, etc. -- that also come into an analysis). However, I could imagine that in a perfect world you could look at expected standard errors created using parametric bootstrapping from the MLE of the parameters and see if the actual standard errors are different -- maybe it could reflect plasticity or some other factor. But I really don't know. You might look at some of the methods that can deal with intraspecific and interspecific processes to get at this sort of biological question (the Felsenstein 2008 Contrasts revisited paper might be interesting as a start, though it's not OU and comes at this from a different direction), but it's fun to think about ways to go from what is treated as annoying noise to a meaningful signal.
Best, Brian _______________________________________________________________________ Brian O'Meara, http://www.brianomeara.info, especially Calendar <http://brianomeara.info/calendars/omeara/>, CV <http://brianomeara.info/cv/>, and Feedback <http://brianomeara.info/teaching/feedback/> Associate Professor, Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, UT Knoxville Associate Head, Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, UT Knoxville Associate Director for Postdoctoral Activities, National Institute for Mathematical & Biological Synthesis <http://www.nimbios.org> (NIMBioS) Communication Director, Society of Systematic Biologists On Thu, Sep 15, 2016 at 5:37 PM, Xiaojing Wei <weixx...@umn.edu> wrote: > Dear R-sig-phylo users, > > I wonder if the standard errors of the theta estimates in OU models have > any biologically meaningful interpretations. For instance, could it give > some indication of plasticity in traits, or the optimal level of plasticity > in traits? Or does it simply reflect estimation uncertainty of the > phylogeny or the OU model? > > Thanks a lot! > > -- > Xiaojing Wei > PhD student > Dept. of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior > University of Minnesota > Rm. 211 Ecology Bld., 1987 Upper Buford Cir. > St. Paul, 55108 > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > _______________________________________________ > R-sig-phylo mailing list - R-sig-phylo@r-project.org > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo > Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/r- > sig-ph...@r-project.org/ > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] _______________________________________________ R-sig-phylo mailing list - R-sig-phylo@r-project.org https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/r-sig-phylo@r-project.org/
