The impact of Felsenstein's “Phylogenies and the comparative method” on evolutionary biology

Priscilla Carvalho, José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho and Luis Mauricio Bini
Additional contact information
Priscilla Carvalho: Graduate Program in Biology (Ecology), Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás,
José Alexandre Felizola Diniz-Filho: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás
Luis Mauricio Bini: Departamento de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Goiás

Scientometrics, 2005, vol. 62, issue 1, No 3, 53-66

Abstract: Summary Felsenstein’s (1985) method of phylogenetic independent contrasts is probably the most commonly used technique in evolutionary biology to study adaptation of organisms to their environment, taking phylogeny into account. Here, we performed a scientometric evaluation of all 1462 articles that cited Felsenstein (1985) between 1985 and 2002, in order to analyze the impact of his comparative method on the evolutionary research program and what has been done since it. We found that Felsentein’s (1985) article can be classified as a “hot paper” or a breakthrough contribution, since it was the most cited article from The American Naturalist published in 1985. Also, it can be considered as a “citation classic”, since it is the third more cited paper in The American Naturalist from 1945 to 2002. In general, papers that cited Felsenstein (1985) were published in high-impact journals, and most of them are theoretical articles indicating that biologists are aware of statistical and conceptual problems in dealing with comparative methods.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-005-0003-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:62:y:2005:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-005-0003-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-005-0003-y

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().