Reply to Wiens and Scholl: The time dependency of diversification rates is a widely observed phenomenon

In their comment on our recent paper (1), Wiens and Scholl (2) raise 2 points that are hard to reconcile with one another: First, they argue that one of our primary findings—of the time dependency of diversification rate estimates—was also reported by them and, second, that the methods we used to make these findings are flawed. Rather than claiming priority, we instead highlighted a number of papers that had previously documented the pattern or rate scaling (3–6), most of which predate the paper by Wiens and Scholl (7). The aim of our paper was to use a smaller set of robust and well-resolved trees to evaluate different explanations for this phenomenon. Our results suggest this pattern is likely a property that emerges from interesting biological processes. As for Wiens and Scholl’s second point regarding the appropriateness of using constant-rate estimators versus variable-rate estimators when rates are known to vary, this question has already been addressed in depth in the literature (see, e.g., refs. 8 and 9), and we have nothing to add on this point. We would especially like to draw the readers’ attention to the statement from the Editorial Board of the journal Evolution (10) about a recent paper on these estimators published by Wiens and coworkers (11) and used to support their claims in this letter.