- the standard way (see the package \pkg{geiger} for a different
- implementation). If \code{method = "pic"} or \code{"GLS"}, the
- confidence intervals are computed using the expected variances under
- the model, so they depend only on the tree.
+ the standard way. The REML method first estimates the ancestral value
+ at the root (aka, the phylogenetic mean), then the variance of the
+ Brownian motion process is estimated by optimizing the residual
+ log-likelihood. The ancestral values are finally inferred from the
+ likelihood function giving these two parameters. If \code{method =
+ "pic"} or \code{"GLS"}, the confidence intervals are computed using
+ the expected variances under the model, so they depend only on the
+ tree.
+
+ It could be shown that, with a continous character, REML results in
+ unbiased estimates of the variance of the Brownian motion process
+ while ML gives a downward bias. Therefore, the former is recommanded
+ over the latter, even though it is not the default.