We are meeting this semester (Spring 2023) on Mondays 10:00-11:00pm in Gant W416. Subscribe to systematics listserv to receive emails containing connection information (or write to someone listed in Contact Info).

March 27, 2023

This week we’re working through Chapter 12 in Revell and Harmon.

March 20, 2023

Paul suggests this paper just out in Nature:

LA Bergeron et al. 2023. Evolution of the germline mutation rate across vertebrates. Nature DOI:10.1038/s41586-023-05752-y

March 13, 2023

No meeting: spring break week

March 6, 2023

From Analisa Milkey: We decided to discuss the following paper on Monday:

X-X Pang and D-Y Zhang. 2023. Impact of ghost introgression on coalescent-based species tree inference and estimation of divergence time Systematic Biology syac047 (advance access).

February 27, 2023

From Frank Muzio: We decided to take a break from the book and read a paper for next week’s meeting. The paper can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13872 It is on modeling ancestral state estimation and one of the authors is a candidate for the invert position.

February 20, 2023

This week we’re working through the last part of Chapter 11 in Revell and Harmon (sections 11.3 HiSSE and 11.4 QuaSSE).

February 13, 2023

This week let’s work through the first 2 major sections of Chapter 11 in the Revell and Harmon book: 11.2 BiSSE and 11.3 MuSSE. We’ll save the (really long) HiSSE and QuaSSE models for a later week to avoid R coding burnout. If you finish those first 2 sections and still have some time to kill, you might want to read through the excellent paper in which the BiSSE model was introduced:

WP Maddison, PE Midford, SP Otto, and T Oakley. 2007. Estimating a binary character’s effect on speciation and extinction. Systematic Biology 56:701-710. DOI:10.1080/10635150701607033

February 6, 2023

This week we’ll discuss this paper comparing estimation of speciation and extinction rates derived from fossils vs. molecular time trees.

NS Upham, JA Esselstyn, and W Jetz. 2021. Molecules and fossils tell distinct yet complementary stories of mammal diversification. Current Biology 31:4195-4206.e3.

January 30, 2023

This week we will discuss the Nature paper by Louca and Pennell about how much information exists about estimating variable speciation and extinction rates in time trees.

You might want to first read the short commentary by Mark Pagel

January 23, 2023

This week we will work through Chapter 10 in the Revell and Harmon book. We can choose to change direction for subsequent meetings, so be thinking about what you want Systematics Seminar to be about this semester.