Biology 4289b

Biosystematics and Phylogenetics

Biology 9289b

Instructor: André Lachance

Room 2036 Biology and Geology Building


Schedule for 2017

Lectures

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 9:30 - Physics and Astronomy 106

 

Practicals

Tuesday and Friday 10:30 - North Campus Building 105

 We shall start lectures and tutorials in full force Friday, January 6, 9:30-11:30

For further information on the importance of attending classes during the first week of term, please refer to Tom Wayman's excellent poem.

 

Midterm in class February 17

Course outline for 2017

 

Legal stuff:

Accommodations

Scholastic offenses

 

Stress - distress

Consult UWO Health and Wellness website


Assignments

 

1. Find a relatively recent research article dealing the description of a species or the taxonomy of a group of species.

Make sure that the authors used sequence information as part of their data.

Using the NCBI Taxonomy and BLAST sites, select a set of 5 species on the basis of the following criteria:

A set of homologous sequences should be available for all species.

The species should be significantly related.

Here are some hints on how to proceed.

Presentation of 2-3 min introducing your species, their general biological interest, and a brief summary of the article that you found.

The following specialized journals publish this sort of article - there are more!

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Journal of Microbiology

Aquaculture

Blumea - Biodiversity, Evolution and Biogeography of Plants

Cladistics

Diatom research

European Journal of Phycology (algae)

European Journal of Protistology

Extremophiles

Herpetologia (reptiles and amphibians)

International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Journal of General Virology

Marine Biodiversity

Marine Mammal Science

Mycotaxon (fungi)

Naturwissenschaften

Novon (plants)

Parasites and Vectors

Phytokeys (plants)

Phytotaxa (plants)

Polar Biology

Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington

Systematic and Applied Microbiology

Systematics and Biodiversity

Systematic Entomology

Taxon

The Auk (birds)

The Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology

Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases

Zookeys (animals)

Zootaxa (animals)

Taxonomic papers also appear in more general journals:

PLoS One

 

2. Draw a list of your species (Excel) with a few (3-5) characters, the relevant states or values,

and an analysis of these characters in terms of data types.

Construct a dichotomous, monothetic identification key to your species.

Presentation of 3-5 min outlining some of the salient features of

your character table and demonstrating some aspects of your key.

 

3. Discuss how authors of a relevant research article have applied various species concepts.

Perform an etymological analysis of some of the names.

Presentation of 3-5 min.

   

4. Align a set of homologous sequences one of the tools provided in Mega6.

Ensure that the data contain at least some parsimony-informative sites.

Trim the fringe and save as a 'mas' file; export to phylogeny.

Construct a tree of any kind, but with scaled branches.

Format and export the tree to PowerPoint.

Map selected phenotypic characters of your species onto the tree,

identifying examples of synapomorphies, homoplasies, or symplesiomorphies.

Presentation of 10 min.

 


Concepts

By the end of the course, you should be familiar with all the concepts listed here

 

The 4289b Tree of Life

 

The Geological Timescale

By the end of the course, you should have memorized the names and order

of all eons and eras, all periods of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, and all epochs of the Cenozoic

 

Here is today


Links

Biosystematics & Phylogenetics in the News

Archaea and the origin of Eukarya (April 2015)
New World Monkeys (December 2013)

People

Concepts

Software, etc.

Hennig

Linnaeus

Borge

Herpetology, Ornithology, and Phylogenetics

 

Genealogical concordance

 

Paraspecies

 

Hemiplasy


Phylogeny of Plants

 

Phylogenomics

 

The Origin of Land Plants

 

Biosystematics

 

Phylogenetics


 

DNA Forensics

 

Canada

 

USA - FBI - CODIS


A bit of Latin grammar


Aristotle's Great Chain of Being

drawn  by Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana (1579)


Population thinking versus typology: the importance of multiple isolates in microbial species descriptions

 

Multiple strains in yeast species descriptions


Understanding the protostome/deuterostome split

 

Deuterostomy came first


Ape stuff

 

Taxon structure

 

Ape chromosomes

 

Ape mtDNA alignment and trees


DNA chemical structure


Likelihood

BLAST


Install Chromas Lite


Download a raw electropherogram to edit with Chromas

This is a sequence from my lab.  See if you can edit it with Chromas and then BLAST it to see if it matches anything.

 

More electropherograms


PCR

How primer sequences are artefacts


Dot matrix spreadsheet


Mega5


An RFLP gel


The big Texas tree


The breakup of Pangea

From Rodinia to present


Earth's history


Major differences

Trees

The Tree of Life


One-Zoom Tree of Life

 

 DiscoverLife

 

The Timetree of Life

 

Old trees

 

Maximum likelihood for idiots

 

Gene tree vs species tree

 

Hemoglobin, paralogs and orthologs

 

 Tree exercises

Books

References

Theophrastus

 

Linnaeus

Lecture notes

UWO bookstore, $11


Reference used in class

The Ancestor's Tale

Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong

Second Edition


A phylogram

Hennig 1965 

C.H. Smith's Early Classics 

Mayr's species concept 

Gregory: Evolutionary Trees 

Archibald: Pre-Darwinian Trees

Where are the Acoelomorphs in the big tree?


Evolution of homeobox genes 

A new mammalian phylogeny 

An irreverent look at evolution and biodiversity


Image gallery

 

Eubacteria

Archaea
Basal eukaryotes

Glaucophytes - Rhodophytes
Plants

Amoebozoa
Fungi

Mesomycetozoans

Choanoflagellates
Placozoans
Acoelomorphs - Protostomes

Ambulacrarians

Urochordates - Cephalochordates

Agnathes - Chondrichthyans

Fish

Marsupials

Afrotheres

Books on systematics at Sinauer

 

Books on systematics at Roberts

 


Nomenclatural Codes - Full text online

 

International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (Melbourne Code)

 

The International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria

 

International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

Reserve list - Taylor Library

As per your requests

Biology 3466b Website   ●   Biology 9214 Website   ●   André Lachance's UWO-Biology Website   ●   Yeast Newsletter Website

Updated 160122