Systematics Seminar

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This is the home page of the UConn EEB department's Systematics Seminar. 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.

Click here for information about joining and using the Systematics email list

Meeting time and place

We are meeting this semester in the Bamford Room (TLS 171) Fridays from 2-3pm. Let's try to get started on time, as another group is meeting in the Bamford Room starting at 3pm on Fridays.

Theme for Spring Semester 2008

The theme this semester is Tree Thinking. David Baum (Univ. Wisconsin, Madison) is writing a book on Tree Thinking and has agreed to let us read the chapters he has written in return for some constructive criticism. Baum's book will be supplemented with some thought-provoking and heated-debate-generating papers on subjects such as these:

  • can you ever say that a clade is basal?
  • do non-uniform clade priors make sense?
  • what can and can't fossils say about node age
  • when gene trees and species trees are both right, but different
  • the signature of an adaptive radiation

Some suggested papers are listed below the schedule in the section entitled Some possibilities.

Schedule for Spring Semester 2008

Note: the papers linked here require a user name and password to access. If you have forgotten the user name and/or password, contact Paul Lewis. If you want to upload a PDF file for an upcoming discussion, use the Systematics Seminar PDF upload form. Uploading PDFs requires the same user name and password as viewing PDFs.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008: Basal clades

Discussion leader: Paul Lewis

Two of our Tuesday time slots this semester will be taken over by departmental seminars, so rather than waste the first time slot with an organizational meeting, let's get right into things with a consideration of the meaning of the word basal.

Pdficon small.gif Crisp, M. D., and L. G. Cook. 2005. Do early branching lineages signify ancestral traits? TREE 20(3):105-149.
Pdficon small.gif Krell, F.-T., and P. S. Cranston. 2004. Which side of the tree is more basal? Systematic Entomology 29:279-281.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Discussion leader: Frank Smith

Pdficon small.gif de Queiroz, K. 2007. Toward an integrated system of clade names. Syst. Biol. 56:956-974.

In this paper, Kevin de Queiroz considers how to define names for clades, and discusses tree terms such as crown group, stem lineage, etc.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Discussion leader: Karolina Fucikova

Pdficon small.gif Donoghue, P. C. J., and M. J. Benton. 2007. Rocks and clocks: calibrating the Tree of Life using fossils and molecules. TREE 22:424-431.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Discussion leader: Yu(Daniel) Fan

Pdficon small.gif Velasco, J. D. 2007. Why non-uniform priors on clades are both unavoidable and unobjectionable. MPE 45:748-749.

Suggested reading

Pdficon small.gif Pickett. K. M., and C. P. Randle. 2005. Strange bayes indeed: uniform topological priors imply non-uniform clade priors. MPE 34: 203-211.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Cancelled due to snow storm

Friday, February 26, 2008

Discussion leader: Juan Carlos Villarreal Aguilar

Pdficon small.gif Pagel et al. 2006. Large Punctuational Contribution of Speciation to Evolutionary Divergence at the Molecular Level. Science 314: 119-121.
Pdficon small.gif Supporting online material

Friday, February 29, 2008

Discussion leader:

Friday, March 7, 2008

Discussion leader: Nic Tippery

Pdficon small.gif Ricklefs, R. E. 2007. Estimating diversification rates from phylogenetic information. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22: 601-610.

Friday, March 14, 2008

No meeting (Spring Break)

Friday, March 21, 2008

Discussion leader: Roberta Engel

Pdficon small.gif Introduction of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking
Pdficon small.gif Chapter 1 of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking

Friday, March 28, 2008

Discussion leader: Thiago Rangel

Pdficon small.gif Chapter 2 of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking

Friday, April 4, 2008

Discussion leader: Geert Goemans

Pdficon small.gif Chapter 3 of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking

Friday, April 11, 2008

Discussion leader: Carrie Fyler

Pdficon small.gif Chapter 4 of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking

Friday, April 18, 2008 (next meeting)

Discussion leader: everyone and no one

Pdficon small.gif Chapter 5 of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking

Friday, April 25, 2008

Discussion leader:

Pdficon small.gif Chapter 6 of David Baum's book on Tree Thinking

Some possibilities

Feel free to expand this list, and there is of course no requirement that papers for discussion be chosen from this list. To upload a PDF (and receive a free email describing how to make a link to it here), click this link to the upload form. You will need to know the username and password to upload a PDF (same combination needed to download PDFs from this web site).

Paraphyly vs. Polyphyly

Farris' paper is not recent, but would almost certainly be cited by more recent treatments of this subject.

Pdficon small.gif Farris, J. S. 1974. Formal definitions of paraphyly and polyphyly. Systematic Zoology 23: 548-554.

Tree terms

Pdficon small.gif Wilkinson, M., J. O. McInerney, R. P. Hirt, P. G. Foster and T. M. Embley. 2007. Of clades and clans: terms for phylogenetic relationships in unrooted trees. TREE 22:114-115.

Necessity of unequal split priors: undesirable?

The Velasco response in combination with one of the other two would make for an interesting discussion.

Pdficon small.gif Pickett. K. M., and C. P. Randle. 2005. Strange bayes indeed: uniform topological priors imply non-uniform clade priors. MPE 34: 203-211.
Pdficon small.gif Steel, M., and K. M. Pickett. 2006. On the impossibility of uniform priors on clades MPE 39:585-586.
Pdficon small.gif Velasco, J. D. 2007. Why non-uniform priors on clades are both unavoidable and unobjectionable. MPE 45:748-749.

Using fossils in dating lineages

Among other things, this paper explains why fossils cannot indicate actual branching dates.

Pdficon small.gif Donoghue, P. C. J., and M. J. Benton. 2007. Rocks and clocks: calibrating the Tree of Life using fossils and molecules. TREE 22:424-431.

Signature of adaptive radiations

Discusses problems (lineage sorting) associated with, and methods for dealing with, adaptive radiations. May be too far from the topic.

Pdficon small.gif Whitfield, J. B., and P. J. Lockhart. 2007. Deciphering ancient rapid radiations. TREE 22:258-265.

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Past Systematics Seminars