RESEARCH ARTICLE Ancestral reconstruction o

is available at the end of the articleBackground The evolution of life-history traits in different lineages is a major question in the field of evolutionary biology [1], especially because traits may drive the speciation process [2,3]. Indeed, niche-related traits, for example, could di-verge, producing reproductive isolation between two pop-ulations. As a result, this leads to ecological speciation. Coevolution is another interesting topic that determines the process of evolutionary change in a trait triggered by other trait in a lineage. Trait evolution among lineages could occur through reciprocal evolution between inter-acting species, driven by natural selection [4]. Analyses of character evolutionary history, such as ances-tral state reconstruction (reviewed by [5]) and stochasti