Systematics Seminar
This is the home page of the UConn EEB department's Systematics Seminar (EEB 6486). This is a graduate seminar devoted to issues of interest to graduate students and faculty who make up the systematics program at the University of Connecticut.
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Contents
Meeting time and place
We are meeting this semester in the Bamford Room (TLS 171B) Tuesdays 4-5pm (except Sept. 6, when we will meet in TLS 154; see below)
Schedule for Fall Semester 2011
Several themes were identified for this semester's Systematics Seminar. We will spend 2-3 weeks on each one.
- Ancestral state reconstruction
- Use of niche modeling in delimiting species
- Informativeness of genes
- Cryptic species
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
We will attend the special seminar by Chris Bird, an EEB BS alum and presently a postdoctoral associate at the University of Hawaii. The talk will be at 4 pm in TLS 154, and is entitled “Sympatric Speciation on the Seashore.”
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Eric Schultz will lead a discussion of the following paper:
- Whitehead, A. 2010. The evolutionary radiation of diverse osmotolerant physiologies in killifish (Fundulus sp.). Evolution 64(7): 2070-2085. doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.2010.00957.x.
Note: you will need a user name and password to access the PDF above. These were sent out via the Systematics listserv on Sept. 6, 2011, but feel free to write to Paul Lewis if you missed it.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Karolina Fučíková will lead a discussion of the following paper:
- Nagy et al. 2010. The evolution of autodigestion in the mushroom family Psathyrellaceae (Agaricales) inferred from Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian methods. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 57:1037-1048.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Chris Owen will lead a discussion of the following paper:
- Tsang et al. 2011.pdf. Hermit to King, or Hermit to All: Multiple Transitions to Crab-like Forms from Hermit Crab Ancestors. Systematic Biology 60:616–629.
I have also included the classic Cunningham et al. 1992 paper, which originally proposed the "Hermit to King" hypothesis (short and worth the read) and another paper from the Cunningham group that uses DNA and mtDNA gene rearrangements to explore the phylogeny of decapods and the evolution of the crab-like form.
- Cunningham et al. 1992.pdf. Evolution of king crabs from hermit crab ancestors. Nature 355:539-542.
- Morrison et al. 2002.pdf. Mitochondrial gene rearrangements confirm the parallel evolution of crab-like form. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 269:345-350.
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011
Beth Timpe will lead a discussion of the following paper:
Bayesian estimation of ancestral character states on phylogenies. Syst. Biol. 53(5):673–684, 2004.
Past Systematics Seminars
- Spring 2010 (we joined Kent Holsinger's seminar on Statistical Phylogeography this semester)
- Fall 2010
- Spring 2010
- Fall 2009
- Fall 2008
- Spring 2008
- Fall 2007
- Spring 2007
- Fall 2006
- Spring 2005
- Fall 2004
- Spring 2004