+ given through a correlation structure with the option
+ \code{corStruct}.
+
+ In the default setting (i.e., \code{method = "ML"} and \code{model =
+ "BM"}) the maximum likelihood estimation is done simultaneously on the
+ ancestral values and the variance of the Brownian motion process;
+ these estimates are then used to compute the confidence intervals in
+ 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.