文章基本信息

标题：Random walks in the history of life
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作者：James L. Cornette ; Bruce S. Lieberman
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2004
卷号：101
期号：1
页码：187-191
DOI：10.1073/pnas.2637009100
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：The simplest null hypothesis for evolutionary time series is that the observed data follow a random walk. We examined whether aspects of Sepkoski's compilation of marine generic diversity depart from a random walk by using statistical tests from econometrics. Throughout most of the Phanerozoic, the random-walk null hypothesis is not rejected for marine diversity, accumulated origination or accumulated extinction, suggesting that either these variables were correlated with environmental variables that follow a random walk or so many mechanisms were affecting these variables, in different ways, that the resultant trends appear random. The only deviation from this pattern involves rejection of the null hypothesis for roughly the last 75 million years for the diversity and accumulated origination time series.