- Chris Martin: Trophic innovation drives exceptional rates of morphological diversification in two adaptive radiations of Cyprinodon pupfishes
Fantastic story of exceptional rates of evolution and trophic novelty in two tropical lakes. (8:45, Adaptation 9, talk 097002)
- David Plachetzki: Deep homology and the evolution of animal senses: insights from Cnidaria
Cnidarians have homologous proteins to opsins and taste receptors!
- Jeremy Yoder: Coevolution and gene flow in obligate pollination mutualism
Two species of joshua tree each with its own pollinator yucca moth. Moth larva laid in and eat some of Joshua tree fruit, obligate for pollination but if too many eggs are laid tree aborts that fruit. Nice gene flow story reflecting the ability/inability of each moth to cross-pollinate the other tree. Trees overlap in distribution only at one location (top of a horseshoe shape in Nevada).
Pat MacIntyre: Adaptation and niche breath among polyploid cytotypes of Claytonia perfoliata
Peter Ralph: Spatial parallel evolution: one wave or many?
Nice spatial spread genetic structure model
- Tracy Heath (Huelsenbeck group) A Dirchlet process model for estimating lineage-specific substitution rates and dating divergences
[github source code?]
- Charles Marshall: Looking under the hood: the meaning of Bayesian priors on divergence times in light of the nature of the fossil record
Excellent talk discussing limitations and challenges in dating fossils, particularly limitations in rock record itself. A couple nice papers for much better ways on selecting which fossils to use, etc.
- Michael Turelli: Spatial spread of CI-causing Wolbachia
Cubic growth function for spread of wolbachia with an allee effect, and how this modifies Fisher’s wave equation for spatial spread. Going to applied in 7 million dollar project in releasing wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Australia to control Dange fever.
Tom Near: Informed calibration priors and calibration sampling strategies in molecular divergence time of ray-finned fishes
NESCent information session
Dinner with some NESCent folks