Society of Systematic Biologists

Read about new initiatives and upcoming events in our Fall 2010 newsletter:

Wednesday, 12:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

Looking for support for a sabbatical, grad student, postdoc, or meeting? NESCent welcomes your proposals. The next deadline is December 1.

Why do some animals help their relatives raise kids, rather than raise kids of their own? The question continues to spark debate. Sabbatical scholar Jim Hunt hopes to move the debate toward resolution during a meeting he is organizing at NESCent this October on the evolution of insect sociality. Read more about the latest research on the question in the August 30th issue of The New York Times:

Zimmer, C. 2010. Scientists square off on evolutionary value of helping relatives. The New York Times..

Feeding, critical to survival, is an integrated function involving numerous craniofacial structures. Changes in these structures are a significant part of the evolution and diversification of mammals. Our understanding of mammalian craniofacial evolution rests, in part, on functional studies of the motor patterns of craniofacial muscles during feeding, and of the movements and forces within the feeding apparatus. A number of researchers have collected large data sets of motor patterns of feeding muscles and the associated movements and forces from the jaws and hyolaryngeal apparatus. Such data address fundamental questions about the evolution, functional morphology, and development of the mammalian head. Despite significant datasets and collegiality amongst workers, inter-specific studies of neuromotor evolution are rare because of the lack of a master database. The overarching goal of the working group is to develop a database of physiologic data on feeding in mammals through three specific aims: (1) combine existing EMG, kinematic, and bone strain data for at least 36 mammalian species in 10 orders into a database; (2) generate operational strategies for studying key scientific questions about neuromotor evolution and constraint, craniofacial evolution, and feeding behavior with the database; (3) test hypotheses about the evolution and conservation of motor pattern in mammals. This will be the first major database of neuromuscular data to be constructed. It will be a significant tool for studying the evolution of the mammalian feeding apparatus, and will be a model for future study of the evolution of functional systems and neuromotor evolution.

There is widespread agreement that economic theory must become based on a more accurate conception of human nature to successfully guide public policy. That is the objective of behavioral economics, which has become prominent within the larger field of economics. However, behavioral economics needs to become more broadly based in the human behavioral sciences, which in turn must be grounded in evolutionary theory. The purpose of this working group is to properly ground the field of behavioral economics in evolutionary theory. This objective, in turn, will require an integration of subfields within the human behavioral sciences, including evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, applied behavioral analysis, sociology, cultural anthropology, and neurobiology. These subfields need to be brought together before they can be related to an applied science such as behavioral economics. This working group is one of three that emerged from the recent NESCent catalysis meeting titled �The Nature of Regulation: How Evolutionary Theory Can Inform the Regulation of Large-scale Human Social Interactions� which was organized in collaboration with the Evolution Institute. The EI has provided an organizational structure that includes a large community of interest (COI) in addition to the catalysis meeting participants. The working groups will take advantage of the same organizational structure, allowing the 10-12 people who work intensively on the project to interact with the other working groups and an engaged audience of scientists, economists, and policy makers across disciplines.

Wednesday, 12:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

Solitary snails change their dating and mating strategy when danger is near, says a new study by NESCent postdoctoral fellow Josh Auld. His results were published this July in the journal Evolution.

Photo by Josh Auld

NESCent is pleased to announce the following new awards from our April and July 2010 call for proposals:

Graduate Fellows

Bret Moore (Purdue University)
Do retinal specializations reflect ecology? An evolutionary perspective

Paul Durst (Duke University)
Evaluating patterns and trends in insular body size evolution

Sarah Seiter (UNC Chapel Hill)
Distinguishing trait value and trait plasticity in the evolution of reaction norms

Nimrod Rubinstein (Tel-Aviv University)
Detection of clade-specific accelerations and decelerations in gene evolutionary rates

Short-term Visitors

Luke Mahler (Harvard University)
New tools for investigating replicated adaptive radiation
August 5‐26, 2010

Samantha Hopkins (University of Oregon) and Samantha Price (University of California, Davis)
Evolution of mammalian dietary strategies and the importance of omnivory
August 14‐27, 2010

Katharina Huber and Vincent Moulton (University of East Anglia, UK)
New applications of phylogenetic combinatoricsAugust 16-27, 2010

Roi Dor (Cornell University)
Applying new phylogenetic comparative methods to analyze character evolution in swallows
August 30 - September 5, 2010

Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Potential for peripheral populations to mitigate core extinctions: Bats and white nose syndrome
October 1 - December 31, 2010


Katia Koelle (NESCent Triangle Scholar from Duke University)
October 1 - December 31, 2010

Howard Ross(University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Species delimitation using networks
October 18‐29, 2010


For more information about these scholars and their research projects, please visit http://www.nescent.org/science/awards.php

Wednesday, 12:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

For more information about research opportunities at NESCent, visit www.nescent.org/science/proposals.php

We are seeking participants for the GMOD Tools for Evolutionary Biology Hackathon, held November 8-12, 2010 at the US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, NC.

This hackathon targets three critical gaps in the capabilities of the GMOD toolbox that currently limit its utility for evolutionary research:

1. Visualization of comparative genomics data
2. Visualization of phylogenetic data and trees
3. Support for population diversity and phenotype data

If you are interested in these areas and have relevant expertise, you are strongly encouraged to apply. Relevant areas of expertise include more than just software development: if you are a GMOD power user, visualization guru, domain expert (comparative, phylogenetics, population, ...), or documentation wizard, then your skills are needed!

How To Apply:

Fill out the online application form at http://bit.ly/gmodevohack.
Applications are due August 25.

About GMOD:

GMOD is an intercompatible suite of open-source software components for storing, managing, analyzing, and visualizing genome-scale data. GMOD includes many widely-used software components: GBrowse and JBrowse, both genome viewers; GBrowse_syn, a comparative genomics viewer; Chado, a generic and modular database schema; CMap, a comparative map viewer; as well as many other components including Apollo, MAKER, BioMart, InterMine, and Galaxy. We hope to extend the functionality of existing GMOD components, and integrate new components as well.

About Hackathons:

A hackathon is an intense event at which a group of programmers with different backgrounds and skills collaborate hands-on and face-to-face to develop working code that is of utility to the community as a whole. The mix of people will include domain experts and computer-savvy end-users.

More details about the event, its motivation, organization, procedures, and attendees, as well as URLs to the hackathon and related websites are included below.

Sincerely,

The GMOD EvoHack Organizing Committee (and project affiliations as relevant):

Nicole Washington, Chair (LBNL, modENCODE, Phenote)
Robert Buels (SGN, Chado NatDiv)
Scott Cain (OICR, GMOD)
Dave Clements (NESCent, GMOD)
Hilmar Lapp (NESCent, Phenoscape, Chado NatDiv)
Sheldon McKay (University of Arizona, iPlant, GBrowse_syn)

About the GMOD Evo Hackathon

Overview

We are organizing a hackathon to fill critical gaps in the capabilities of the Generic Model Organism Database (GMOD) toolbox that currently limit its utility for evolutionary research. Specifically, we will focus on tools for 1) viewing comparative genomics data; 2) visualizing phylogenomic data; and 3) supporting population diversity data and phenotype annotation.

The event will be hosted at NESCent and bring together a group of about 20+ software developers, end-user representatives, and documentation experts who would otherwise not meet. The participants will include key developers of GMOD components that currently lack features critical for emerging evolutionary biology research, developers of informatics tools in evolutionary research that lack GMOD integration, and informatics-savvy biologists who can represent end-user requirements.

The event will provide a unique opportunity to infuse the GMOD developer community with a heightened awareness of unmet needs in evolutionary biology that GMOD components have the potential to fill, and for tool developers in evolutionary biology to better understand how best to extend or integrate with already existing GMOD components.

Before the Event

Discussion of ideas and sometimes even design actually starts well before the hackathon, on mailing lists, wiki pages, and conference calls set up among accepted attendees. This advance work lays the foundation for participants to be productive from the very first day. This also means that participants should be willing to contribute some time in advance of the hackathon itself to participate in this preparatory discussion.

During the Event

Typically, hackathon participants use the morning of the first day of the event to organize themselves into working groups of between 3 and 6 people, each with a focused implementation objective. Ideas and objectives are discussed, and attendees coalesce around the projects in which they have the most experience or interest.

Deliverables / Event Results

The meeting’s attendance, working groups, and outcomes will be fully logged and documented on the GMOD wiki (http://gmod.org). Each working group during the event will typically have its own wiki page, linked from the main EvoHack page, where it documents its minutes and design notes, and provides links to the code and documentation it produces. Also, since GMOD and NESCent are both committed to open source principles, all code and documentation produced by participants during the hackathon must be published under an OSI-approved open source license. As contributions to existing GMOD tools, all hackathon products will most likely satisfy this requirement automatically.

NESCent

This event is sponsored by the US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent, http://www.nescent.org) through its Informatics Whitepapers program (http://www.nescent.org/informatics/whitepapers.php). NESCent promotes the synthesis of information, concepts and knowledge to address significant, emerging, or novel questions in evolutionary science and its applications. NESCent achieves this by supporting research and education across disciplinary, institutional, geographic, and demographic boundaries (see http://www.nescent.org/science/proposals.php).

Links

Main GMOD EvoHack page, and full proposal: http://gmod.org/wiki/GMOD_Evo_Hackathon

NESCent: http://www.nescent.org/
GMOD: http://gmod.org
Similar past NESCent events, see: http://hackathon.nescent.org/
GMOD hackathon application: http://bit.ly/gmodevohack

Monday, 12:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

Wednesday, 12:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

Tuesday, 12:00 PM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

Courtship calls help penguin females decide which males are likely to be devoted dads, says a study by NESCent Director Allen Rodrigo and colleagues.

Photo by Emma Marks

Monday, 10:00 AM at NESCent, Ninth Street and Main Street, Erwin Mill Building, 2024 W. Main Street, Suite A200. For more information, call 919-668-4551.

Saber-toothed cats may be best known for their supersized canines, but they also had exceptionally strong forelimbs for pinning prey before delivering the fatal bite, says a new study by NESCent researcher Julie Meachen-Samuels.

A major trend in evolutionary biology is the progression towards analytical approaches that synthesize a wide array of data sources to test hypotheses about evolutionary history and the processes the produced it. In this context, Bayesian inference has proved particularly useful in allow the direct incorporation of information from the fossil record, molecular sequences, geographical locations and habitat into coherent model-based estimation and hypothesis testing procedures. The BEAST software package provide a broard range of models for evolutionary analysis from coalescent-based population genetics to relaxed phylogenetics. The aim of this project is to coordinate activities in this burgeoning area, through a series of working group meetings centered around developments of the open source BEAST software package. The output of these meeting will be version 2.0 of the BEAST software, with an ambitious set of goals including the Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of trees with >1000 taxa. This working group will bring together evolutionary biologists, biostatiticians and software developers from three continents, that span the full range of evolutionary analysis from population genetics to molecular ecology and deep phylogeny.

A new study of the last 40 million years of adaptive radiation in Caribbean anoles reveals the widest variety of anole shapes and sizes arose among the evolutionary early-birds. Then as the number of competing anole species on each island increased, the range of new body types began to fizzle, researchers report in the latest issue of Evolution.

Photo by Luke Mahler