Environmental predictability in phylogenetic comparative analysis: how to measure it and does it matter?

Aim
Abiotic environmental conditions shape ecological and evolutionary processes, yet quantifying their influence on organisms remains challenging due to variation among metrics and their intercorrelations. This study evaluates the utility of temporal environmental predictability measures and assesses their explanatory power in phylogenetic comparative analyses.
Innovation
We systematically compare widely used metrics of predictability and explore their correlations with environmental means and variances in a global meteorological dataset. Using cooperative breeding birds as a case study, we assess the impact of including predictability metrics in phylogenetic comparative analyses. We demonstrate the consequences of choosing specific metrics and the trade-offs between increased data inclusion and model interpretability.
Main conclusions
Predictability metrics, though intuitively meaningful, have been conceptualised and quantified with diverse approaches. We found that different measures..., , # Environmental predictability in phylogenetic comparative analysis: how to measure it and does it matter?

[Access this dataset on Dryad](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gtht76j02)

This dataset contains the raw and processed data, derived climatic measures, phylogenetic trees, and analysis scripts associated with the manuscript titled above. The analyses explore the role of environmental predictability in shaping organismal traits and adaptation patterns, combining global climate data, regional biological datasets, and phylogenetic comparative methods.

## Description of the Data and File Structure

The dataset is structured into four main directories, each corresponding to a major analysis section of the manuscript:

### 1. `GlobalAnalysis`

* `/data/`: Contains processed CRU TS climate datasets.

These datasets retain the same structure as CRU TS:
* **Temporal resolution**: Monthly
* **Spatial resolution**: 0.5° latitude × 0.5° longitude
* **Units**:
* Temperature: degree...,