phyloMeta: a program for phylogenetic comparative analyses with meta-analysis.

Abstract

phyloMeta is an easy to use console program for integrating phylogenetic information into meta-analysis. It is designed to help ecologists, evolutionary biologists and conservation biologists analyze effect size data extracted from published studies in a comparative phylogenetic context. This software estimates phylogenetic versions of all the traditional meta-analytical statistics used for: pooling effect sizes with weighted regressions; evaluating the homogeneity of these effect sizes; performing moderator tests akin to ANOVA style analyses; and analyzing data with fixed- and random-effects models. phyloMeta is developed in C/C++ and can be used via command line in MS Windows environments. phyloMeta can be obtained freely as an executable on the web at http://lajeunesse.myweb.usf.edu/publications lajeunesse@usf.edu.