Post provided by Bruno do Rosario Petrucci Inferring rates of diversification from phylogenies and fossils has been a focus of evolutionary biology for generations, since a quantitative understanding of the dynamics of speciation and extinction is necessary for a complete picture of the history of life. Computational and statistical methods with that goal have recently seen an explosion in complexity and power. While exciting, this … Continue reading Searching for my (paleo)buddies
Post provided by Sandra J. Simon Working with a Genetic Model During my PhD at West Virginia University (WVU), I worked with the genetic models in the family Salicaceae, such as Populus trichocarpa,to understand the relationship between plant genetics and biotic interactions. Let’s take a moment to focus on what makes P. trichocarpa a good species to use as a genetic model by comparing it … Continue reading Increasing the accessibility of genetic sequencing with ISSRseq
Our April issue is now online now! This issue contains 11 articles about the latest methods in ecology and evolution including machine learning, mitochondrial gene extraction, robot birds and much more! Featured Articles The popularity of machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL) and artificial intelligence (AI) has risen sharply in recent years. This article provides a comprehensive overview of the field of ML and DL, summarizing … Continue reading Our April issue is out now!
Post provided by Pasquale Raia (he/him), Alessandro Mondanaro (he/him), Mirko Di Febbraro (he/him), Marina Melchionna (she/her) and Silvia Castiglione (she/her) Back in 2001 Sally Duncan, a quite prolific science writer, published on Science Findings, one of the Oregon-based Pacific Northwest Research Station’s public resources, an exquisitely assembled report focusing on a fundamental issue in ecology, the definition, perception and meaning of ecological rarity. To ecologists … Continue reading ENphylo: A new method to model the distribution of extremely rare species
The Robert May Prize is awarded to the best paper written by in the journal by an author at the start of their research career. With entries spanning out 13th volume our senior editors have selected the following 8 papers. Tanya Strydom with Food web reconstruction through phylogenetic transfer of low-rank network representation Sandra Simon with ISSRseq: An extensible method for reduced representation sequencing Carrie … Continue reading Robert May Early Career Researcher Shortlist Announced
Our March issue is now online now! This issue contains 23 articles about the latest methods in ecology and evolution, including a special feature on Methods in Ecological forecasting, fossils citizen science and much more! Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover. Ecological niche modelling (ENM), species distribution modelling and related spatial analytical methods were first developed in … Continue reading Our March issue is out now!
Our February issue is now online now! This issue contains 32 articles about the latest methods in ecology and evolution, including a special feature on Leveraging Natural History Collections to Understand the Impacts of Global Change, robot herding and much more! Read to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover. Special Feature This issue contains 11 articles which are part … Continue reading Our February Issue is out now!
Our January issue is now online now open access! This issue contains 23 articles about the latest methods in ecology and evolution, including a special feature on Large data and complex models, methods on food web visualisation, biologging and much more! Read our first open access issue to find out about this month’s featured articles and the article behind our cover. Special feature Realising the Promise … Continue reading Our January issue is now online and open access!
Post provided by EMILIE AIMÉ, Managing Editor, Methods in Ecology and Evolution This year’s annual ESA meeting is fast approaching. It’s in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and I’ll be heading across the pond, along with Catherine Hill, our Head of Publications, and Hazel Norman, our Executive Director, to chat to delegates about Methods in Ecology and Evolution, as well as our other journals and the British … Continue reading Meet the Team at ESA 2016
If you are attending Evolution, as well as attending the fabulous talks mentioned by Hélène below, do stop by booth 125 to see our BES colleague Simon Hoggart. Simon is the Assistant Editor of Journal of Animal Ecology and would be happy to answer your questions about any of our journals or any of the other work we do here at the BES.
RPANDA: a time machine for evolutionary biologists
Imagine “Doc”, Marty’s friend in Back to the Future, trying to travel back millions of years in an attempt to understand the history of life. Instead of building a time machine from a DeLorean sports car powered by plutonium, he could dig fossils, or more likely, he would use molecular phylogenies.
Molecular phylogenies are family trees of species that can be built from data collected today: the genes (molecules) of present-day species (Fig 1). They are often thought of as trees, in reference to Darwin’s tree of life. The leaves represent the present: species that can be found on Earth today. The branches represent the past: ancestral species, which from time to time split, giving rise to two independent species. The structure of the tree tells us which species descend from which ancestors, and when their divergence happened.
Fig 1: The phylogenetic tree of all birds (adapted from Jetz et al. 2012). Each bird order is represented by a single bird silloutter and a specific colour (the most abundant order of Passeriformes, for example is represented in dark orange). Each terminal leaf represents a present-day bird species, while internal branches represent the evolutionary relationships among these species.
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