We are meeting this semester (Fall 2026) on Fridays from 12:20-1:15 in PBB 303 (i.e. PharmBio 3rd floor “fishbowl”).

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Friday, September 4, 2026

Let’s begin with a paper by Rosana Zenil-Ferguson, who will be visiting our department and giving the first departmental seminar of the semester on Thursday, September 10.

AL Russell, R Zenil-Ferguson, SL Buchmann, DD Jolles, R Kriebel, M Vallejo-Marin. 2026. Widespread evolution of poricidal flowers: a striking example of morphological convergence across flowering plants. Evolution 80(1):240-253. DOI:10.1093/evolut/qpaf220

Friday, September 11, 2026

Chris Simon recommends this paper for our next Systematics Seminar, revealing that there is population structure within man-o’-war (Physalia) species, and there are at least four species too!

SH Church, …., Chris Simon, …, and Casey W. Dunn. 2025. Population genomics of a sailing siphonophore reveal genetic structure in the open ocean. Current Biology 35: 1-14. DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2025.05.066.

Friday, September 18, 2026

First-in-flight (odonates, not the Wright brothers). Doug will lead the discussion on this paper on Barn Dance Friday:

LG Newton et al. 2026. Soaring systematics: an evaluation of biogeography and flight behavior in dragonflies and damselflies (Insecta: Odonata) using phylogenomics. Systematic Biology 75(5):984-1002. DOI:10.1093/sysbio/syag005

Friday, September 25, 2026

Gregory has “identified” this paper as the one to discuss on Friday:

S Tarasov and J Uyeda. 2026. Unidentifiability and false-positive inference in state-dependent diversification models. Nature Communications 17:9076. DOI:10.1038/s41467-026-75829-5.

Friday, October 2, 2026

You will certainly “lichen” the paper Henry Aymes chose for this week!

R Pino-Bodas, T Ahti, S Stenroos, and I. Sanmartín. 2026. Diversification and spatio-temporal evolution of Cladoniaceae (Lecanorales, Ascomycota), a widespread family of lichen-forming fungi. Fungal Biology 130:101710. DOI:10.1016/j.funbio.2025.101710

Friday, October 9, 2026

Meghan chose this paper “fir” us to read this week, replete with mitochondrial, plastid, and nuclear discordance:

S Park, M Kwak, and S Park. 2024. Complete organelle genomes of Korean fir, Abies koreana and phylogenomics of the gymnosperm genus Abies using nuclear and cytoplasmic DNA sequence data. Scientific Reports 14:7636. DOI:10.1038/s41598-024-58253-x

Friday, October 16, 2026

Javi chose this paper to read for this week:

LM Baraf, JY Hung, and PF Cowman. 2025. Phylogenomics of marine angelfishes: diagnosing sources of systematic discordance for an iconic reef fish family (F: Pomacanthidae). Syst. Biol. 74(5):799–817. DOI:10.1093/sysbio/syaf016

Friday, October 23, 2026

Netanya will weave a tale for us this week that will hopefully balloon into a great discussion!

G Kim, EH Choi, and UW Hwang. 2025. Three distinct genetic lineages of Trichonephila clavata based on mitochondrial COI and genome-wide SNPs on the Korean Peninsula. Scientific Reports 15:41911. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-25890-9.

Friday, October 30, 2026

Chris has “converged” on this paper, which “categorically” shows how to identify genes associated with traits using relative rates of evolution along phylogenies:

R Redlich, A Kowalczyk, M Tene, HH Sestili, K Foley, E Saputra, N Clark, M Chikina, WK Meyer, and AR Pfenning. 2024. RERconverge expansion: using relative evolutionary rates to study complex categorical trait evolution. Molecular Biology and Evolution 41(11):msae210. DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msae210

Friday, November 6, 2026

Henry will resolve all incongruence uncovered by this target-capture study of lichens:

TJ Widhelm, F Grewe, J-P Huang, JA Mercado-Díaz, B Goffinet, R Lücking, B Moncada, R Mason-Gamer, and HT Lumbsch. 2019. Multiple historical processes obscure phylogenetic relationships in a taxonomically difficult group (Lobariaceae, Ascomycota). Scientific Reports 9:8968. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-45455-x

Friday, November 13, 2026

Crystal will be our host for a Friday the 13th discussion of a scary (to plants) disease-causing bacterium:

AK Kahn and RPP Almeida. 2022. Phylogenetics of historical host switches in a bacterial plant pathogen. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 88(7):e02356-21. DOI:10.1128/aem.02356-21

Friday, November 20, 2026

(looking for a volunteer)

Friday, November 27, 2026

THANKSGIVING BREAK

Friday, December 4, 2026

(looking for a volunteer)

Friday, December 11, 2026

Javi will lead us in discussing this very fishy paper on the role of skull modularity in an adaptive radiation:

KM Evans, E Duarte-Ribeiro, HW Chan, M Friedman, ML Habegger, W Ludt, T Clardy, and R Betancur. 2026. Selection, constraints, and contingency drive mosaic patterns of evolution during the carangarian adaptive radiation. Science Advances 12(37):eaeh7825. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh7825