utility of brownie for continuous trait evolution between sister species

[pbj]

Hello all,
I am interested to hear any comments/insight into the utility of
brownie for investigating different rates of character evolution
between a pair of sister species with dense intraspecific sampling of
indivdiuals. My reason for asking is that it does not seem in line
with the way in which brownie has been used in the literature (e.g.,
investigating the rates of evolution in continous/discrete characters
among a wider evolutionary breadth of species with little
intraspecific sampling).

Briefly, the study is of two subspecies of plants where 13 sequenced
based loci have been assayed from ~75 samples of each representing a
large portion of the geographic range of each. The two species differ
in mating system and morphological traits have been measured (in the
greenhouse) that often differ among mating systems (i.e., protandry,
'flower size', and anther stigma distance). Based on preliminary runs
in brownie, there are substantial differences in the rate of evolution
between the monophyletic selfing taxon and the paraphyletic
outcrossing taxon. Based on tree topology with outgroups, ancestral
state reconstructions and tMRCA analyses in BEAST the outcrossing
taxon appears to be ancestral. Therefore, it is not surprising that
rates differ in continuous character evolution given that there has
been potentially little phenotypic change in the outcrosser but a
large change from the ancestral state of the selfer to its current
morphology.

Sorry for the long email and thanks for any input anyone might have.

Cheers,
James

Post-doctoral Researcher
University of Minnesota