Combined with the new species described here, a recent species level nephilid phylogeny [20] makes possible the most detailed analysis of size change in nephilids to date, and thus should enable more rigorous hypotheses about selective forces affecting SSD in spiders.
More Level I research is important, but so, too, is more rigorous, hypothesis-driven basic research.
To enhance insights into the processes that influenced the evolutionary history of this widespread passerine, future investigations should increase geographic sampling intensity in the northeastern portion of the species range and evaluate alternative scenarios through a more rigorous hypothesis-testing framework (such as Approximate Bayesian computation).
Evolutionary game theory makes possible a more rigorous statement of this hypothesis, since repeated games are a useful if simplistic approximation of life in a close-knit group (Axelrod 1984 , 1986 Skyrms 1996; Gintis 2000).
However, the washout periods here were not varied experimentally, so a more rigorous assessment of this hypothesis awaits future work.
We agree with this comment and now note in the Discussion that: "However, as the washout period here were not varied experimentally a more rigorous assessment of this hypothesis is testable in future work".
Further analyses that include basal salamander lineages, as well as analytical tools designed to identify highly divergent TE copies (Gu et al. 2008; Singh et al. 2010), will allow an even more rigorous test of this hypothesis.
The extended dipsadine sampling is meant to provide a thorough test of the monophyly of the tribe Dipsadini, thereby offering a more rigorous background for the resulting hypothesis of interrelationships of its constituent parts.
The relatively low homing performance of O. pumilio, a dendrobatid frog with shorter tadpole transport distances, observed in the study by Nowakowski et al. (2012) is consistent with this hypothesis, but more rigorous comparative work is necessary.
Thus, none of the results are conclusive, and the findings represent, at best, hypotheses for more rigorous studies of policy impacts.
