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Response to Boudinot et al. Refers toFossil gaps, ghost lineages, and ‘major extinction events’
 

Response to Boudinot et al. Refers toFossil gaps, ghost lineages, and ‘major extinction events’

Corentin Jouault, Nozomu Oyama, Sergio Álvarez-Parra, Diying Huang, Vincent Perrichot, Fabien L. Condamine Frédéric Legendre
Current Biology, Vol.36(2), pp.R50-R51
2026
: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.12.001
: 41558469
The diversification of Hymenoptera is a transformative evolutionary story in insect evolution, fundamentally tied to major global events like the Mid-Mesozoic Parasitoid Revolution (MMPR) and the Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution (ATR). The recent paper by Jouault et al.1 provided a first large-scale quantification of Hymenoptera diversification using fossil occurrence data through two complementary Bayesian methods: PyRate, which models origination and extinction dynamics, and the Bayesian Brownian Bridge (BBB), which estimates clade origination and extinction ages2,3,4,5. In a critique, Boudinot et al.6 raise concerns that our analyses overfit a sparse fossil record, misinterpret extinction signals, and overlook the putative absence of a Permian Hymenoptera ghost lineage. However, these concerns were not accompanied by statistical tests. Moreover, the original methodological papers include extensive simulations and empirical evaluations explicitly designed to assess the robustness and behavior of these models under varying fossil recovery scenarios; we direct readers to those studies for full details2,3,4,5,7. Here, we clarify our methodology and counter these claims. Far from undermining our work, the critique merely reiterates and highlights the interpretive caution that underpins our study.

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