There has been discussion and research for decades into support values for phylogenetic nodes and the relative quality of different phylogenies as a whole. Here is a new and impressive (although clearly subjective) criteria for confidence in a phylogenetic tree- “I am so confident in this tree I have had it tattooed onto my body”!!!The…
Category: Science
Evolutionary Biology Impact Factors
Just came across the 2007 impact factors for evolutionary biology journals. I think these are only recently available? Anyway no great surprises I guess, but good to see that MBE and Syst Biol are doing so well TRENDS ECOL EVOL 14.79 ANNU REV ECOL EVOL S 10.340 SYSTEMATIC BIOL 8.802 MOL BIOL EVOL 6.438 MOL…
Human population bottlenecks?
John Hawks has a nice post concerning evidence for human population size in the stone age. This work relates to Behar et al “The Dawn of Human Matrilineal Diversity” and the press releases and coverage that it has received. Careful reasoning and analysis like he provides though is unlikely to dent more sensational headlines of…
Anonymous peer review
I’ve heard a number of people saying anonymous peer review is broken and we need a different publishing model. One where reviewers cannot hide behind their anonymity. I don’t think it is broken. Actually I think anonymity is essential, one of the few things that protects science from politics and human nature. Sure there can…
phylogenomics?
While I was reading the Nature paper I was talking about in my last post I was thinking about the use of the term “phylogenomics”. It seems like there are two quite separate contexts where it is used.(1) Integrating evolutionary biology into genomics (2) phylogenetics using a lot of data The term “phylogenomics” was first…
Understanding Evolutionary Trees
Following some links on other blogs I’ve recently seen an excellent article by T. Ryan Gregory called “Understanding Evolutionary Trees”. It introduces and explains evolutionary (phylogenetic) trees and highlights the importance of tree thinking. It even has a section on how NOT to read evolutionary trees, outlining common misunderstandings, misconceptions and misinterpretations. I wish I…
The Origins of Genome Architecture- Lynch
So I don’t hate all books. Over Christmas I read Michael Lynch’s new book “The Origins of Genome Architecture”. One of the best books I have read in a long time. Well-written, clearly argued, well referenced and important. If you like molecular evolution, genomics or related topics you should definitely read this. I learned a…
Are books now obsolete?
Well no, I guess they’re not. But I’ve been thinking about whether some types of book publishing are even worthwhile. So, what’s my complaint? Well, in many cases I don’t see why either publishers or paper books are of any use. I think researchers can easily self-publish PDFs that are open access, free and may…
EvoPhylo 