Society of Systematic Biologists

The WABI 2005 conference volume (Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) has some interesting papers on phylogenetics, on such topics as supertrees, tree distances, biogeography, and more.

The method of automating the construction of fungal trees described in the August issue of Systematic Biology by Hibbett et al. (Automated Phylogenetic Taxonomy: An Example in the Homobasidiomycetes (Mushroom-Forming Fungi)) has been featured in Science. For more information, please visit the mor web site.

This provocatively entitled paper by Bapteste et al. has just been published in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The authors conclude:

Our phylogenetic analyses do not support tree-thinking. These results have important conceptual and practical implications. We argue that representations other than a tree should be investigated in this case because a non-critical concatenation of markers could be highly misleading.

New Zealand's Bioinformatics Institute* has launched the first online, open-access journal dedicated to evolutionary bioinformatics -- Evolutionary Bioinformatics Online. There is growing awareness that to understand organismal form and function, through the use of molecular, genetic, genomic, and proteomic data, due consideration must be given to an organism's evolutionary context: history constrains the path an organism is obliged to take, and leaves an indelible mark on its component parts. The journal has an editorial board of leading international researchers, led by Editor-in-Chief Prof. Mark Pagel of Reading University.

Based on papers presented at the first Mathematics of Evolution and Phylogeny conference, this book is now available from Oxford University Press and Amazon.

The second Mathematics of Evolution and Phylogeny conference will be held in Paris this summer.

From PLoS Biology:

Prior to human settlement 700 years ago New Zealand had no terrestrial mammalsâ�"apart from three species of batsâ�"instead, approximately 250 avian species dominated the ecosystem. At the top of the food chain was the extinct Haast's eagle, Harpagornis moorei. H. moorei (10â�"15 kg; 2â�"3 m wingspan) was 30%â�"40% heavier than the largest extant eagle (the harpy eagle, Harpia harpyja), and hunted moa up to 15 times its weight.