Table 1 Multiple ancestral state reconstructions of female song in oscine passerines.

From: Female song is widespread and ancestral in songbirds

Group

Reconstruction Method

Model

Ratio of female song absent:present in data

Ancestral state (absent:present)

1 Oscine species with female song information minus Passerida

 

Parsimony

Unordered

1: 2 known data

0.00: 1.00

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

1: 2 known data

0.08: 0.92*

 

Maximum likelihood

Assym.2

1: 2 known data

0.25: 0.75

2 Oscine species with female song information plus Passerida

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

0: 1 Passerida (all with)

0.07: 0.93*

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

1: 0 Passerida (all without)

0.15: 0.85

3 Oscine species with and without female song information minus Passerida

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

0: 1 missing data

0.06: 0.94*

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

1: 2 missing data

0.07: 0.93*

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

1: 1 missing data

0.08: 0.92*

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

2: 1 missing data

0.12: 0.87

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

4: 1 missing data

0.40: 0.60

 

Maximum likelihood

Mk1

1: 0 missing data

0.79: 0.21

  1. Multiple models indicate that song was ancestral in female songbirds. The final column indicates the probability that female song was absent or present (A:P) in the ancestral state. Female song is strongly supported as the ancestral state in (1) all parsimony and maximum-likelihood models on a tree containing all taxa with information on the presence or absence of female song, as well as with (2) all Passerida scored either as possessing female song (all with) or with female song absent (all without); (3) when species without information on female song are randomly assigned different proportions of female song absent versus present, female song would have to be four times less likely than current distributions suggest to overturn the result that female song is ancestral.
  2. *Female song strongly supported as the ancestral state by a likelihood decision threshold of 2.0.
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