Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Thursday, 26 August 2010
- Discuss Rest article (link above)
- Discuss Understanding Evolutionary Trees (link above)
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Thursday, 30 September 2010Tuesday, 5 October 2010
- Recall
the bee paper we read in which they attempted to describe the center of
origin for bees and to infer whether the "stem bee" was a floral
specialist or a generalist? Similar analyses have attempted to determine, for example, whether
wings have evolved only once in incects or if they have arisen multiple
times.
These types of assessments are important in evolutionary biology.
They are a part of trying to understand how things came to be the
way they are.
- Tuesday, we will discuss this paper on ancestral character state reconstruction.
It is > 10 years old, but it is a "classic" with 365 articles
citing it (24 just this year) according to GoogleScholar. The
methods are tough! You don't need to worry about getting all the
details, and you certainly don't need to understand the equations.
You also don't need to write a summary/critique.
- Instead
of a write-up, please bring one paper published in 2007-2010 that
attempts to reconstruct ancestral character states.
- Hint:
in GoogleScholar, you can search for "ancestral state
reconstruction" or something similar. Or, in GoogleScholar, you
can also see which papers in the last four years have cited this one).
In any case, make sure your example really tries to infer
ancestral character states and isn't just talking about "adaptive
radiations". Be ready to explain your paper briefly.
Thursday, 7 October 2010
- Meet in MSH 151
- Bring a USB drive
- Bring an idea of an organism you might want to include in a phylogenetic a tree;
unless you have some experience, it is probably a good idea to stick to
some mammal and a mitochondrial gene so that I can be of some help!