[R] Advice in model construction

[Chris Mcowen]

Dear list,

I am unsure how to structure my model, i have tried something and it makes sense but i am unsure if i am interpreting it correctly?

i have a continuous response variable - the observed quantity of evolutionary history - EH

Then i have a number of species which have a hierarchical structure ~ Genus, Family etc

My research question is do certain families have significantly higher ( or lower) EH values than the others. 

Reproducible example:

example <- structure(list(Family = structure(c(2L, 1L, 1L, 5L, 7L, 7L, 3L, 
4L, 6L, 6L, 1L, 3L), .Label = c("Araceae", "Asphodelaceae", "Bromeliaceae", 
"Cyperaceae", "Orchidaceae", "Poaceae", "Zingiberaceae"), class = "factor"), 
    Genus = structure(c(3L, 4L, 4L, 1L, 6L, 6L, 2L, 5L, 8L, 9L, 
    4L, 7L), .Label = c("Acianthera", "Aechmea", "Aloe", "Anthurium", 
    "Bulbostylis", "Hedychium", "Lindmania", "Psathyrostachys", 
    "Sesleria"), class = "factor"), Species = structure(c(9L, 
    1L, 10L, 11L, 7L, 4L, 3L, 5L, 8L, 2L, 6L, 12L), .Label = c("bonplandii", 
    "coerulans", "cymosopaniculata", "elatum", "emmerichiae", 
    "gehrigeri", "glabrum", "juncea", "pubescens", "sagittatum", 
    "scalpricaulis", "sessilis"), class = "factor"), EH = c(8.746525, 
    24.462699, 33.03942, 32.719489, 13.598201, 13.598201, 13.164928, 
    9.339228, 9.69705, 13.478372, 37.497137, 59.562911)), .Names = c("Family", 
"Genus", "Species", "EH"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, 
-12L))
 
#My model

test <- lm(EH~Family, data = example)

#in this small example no families are significant but if one was - would that mean they have significantly more EH than the others?

Thanks 

Chris