Reply to: ‘Reconstructed evolutionary patterns from crocodile-line archosaurs demonstrate the impact of failure to log-transform body size data’

I
n our recent analysis of body size evolution in the
Pseudosuchia1, we concluded a variable rate model significantly outperforms a random walk, and that evolutionary
rates show interactions between body size evolution and the
environment. Benson et al.2 express concern that these findings
are inconsistent with previous work3,4, which have found an
Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) model to be well supported. They
attribute this to our not having used a log transformation, and
propose that this undermines our findings due to the effects of
relative scaling. Benson et al. raise some important points; however, there is insufficient evidence to accept the revised conclusions that they propose. In this revision of our analysis, we
conclude that there are too few exceptionally large taxa to change
the outcomes of our analysis, and that the strength of any
Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process is negligible. Simulations replicate
the findings of Benson et al using random data, suggesting log
transformation may inflate and suppress some model likelihoods