Figure 7. Relationship between the root-to-tip variance (a proxy for the clock-likeness of loci) and the rate of evolution.

The most clock-like loci (shown in red), which are often favored for the inference of divergence times (e.g., Smith et al., 2018; Carruthers et al., 2020), are among the most highly conserved and can provide little information for constraining node ages (see also Mongiardino Koch, 2021b). Clock-like genes with a higher information content were used instead by choosing the loci with the lowest root-to-tip variance from among those that were within one standard deviation from the mean evolutionary rate (shown in blue).