Raymond Castillo

Evolving RevBayes into an Open-Source Ecosystem

Had a great post-SSB hackathon with the RevBayes crew! Got tons of work done on both RevBayes and RevGadgets! Special thanks to @trayc7.bsky.social @jembrown.bsky.social for organizing and hosting!

The wonderful Emily Graslie talking to the #SSB2026 crowd about the importance of natural history museums. She has an art background and became enamored with the University of Montana natural history collections and created the #brainscoop series.

I am still actively looking for postdoc positions — please lmk if you (or your friends and colleagues) need a hardworking postdoc with field, lab, and bioinformatic skills!

I am broadly interested in evolution in the ocean, conservation and population genetics, and rapid evolution.

photo of Andy in front of his defense presentation

Successfully added a few letters to my name last month!!! Truly could not have done this with our villages upon villages 🫶🏼

OH MY GOD CONGRATS

Overheard a conversation from an UG walking on campus. They said "I don't think I could have done my degree without AI".

It's somewhat frightening the reliance some have on AI and I'm uncertain of its increased use at universities, but maybe i'm becoming the old man shaking his fist...

I am so happy to have successfully proposed my dissertation chapters! Despite how nervous I was, it went over so well and all of my committee members are so incredibly helpful!

As you are making your schedule for the last day of #Evol2025 don’t forget to add Nicolás Castillo’s talk about Puya character displacement. Puya are the most amazing plant in the Páramo ecosystem and their macroevolution is incredible.

Last but not least, I will be sharing some work on a model I have been developing for chromosome evolution today! Be there or be square! I'll be presenting at 4:45 in Phylogenetic Theory! #Evol2025

Also, if you missed their poster last night, Sarah Swiston, will be presenting their work on elipse modeling for biogeographic range evolution! (EMPIRE)

Alright #Evol2025 folks, we got a ton of talks today!
Gabriel Garcia, a visiting PhD student from Brazil, will be sharing his work on ecological traits driving diversification in bats!

Today another postdoc in the Landis lab, @albertchristian.bsky.social, will be giving a talk during the machine learnering and new inference algorithm section at 3:15! If you are particularly partial to island biogeography you definitely dont wanna miss this one! #Evol2025

Be sure to check out Anna Nagel's talk today in Molecular evolution II! Really cool work on estimating mutation ages and population origins in structured populations! #Evol2025

Had a fantastic time at the mole 2025 workshop in Woods Hole! I am so grateful to meet such amazing scientists! Although times are difficult and uncertain now, engaging with professors and students who are still working so hard to teach and learn despite recent hardships is truly uplifting.

Logo for Society of Systematic Biologists Mentorship Program. Two parallel phylogenies, nothing fancy.

It's back! The Society of Systematic Biologists is running Year 3 of the Mentorship Program!

Find community, support your colleagues, and talk trees. Apply by June 10th, 2025.

Program info: www.systbio.org/mentorship-p...

Application form: forms.gle/QtD22C9dtfRF...

@systbiol.bsky.social

Updates on NSF Priorities

This is bad.

Read the updates.

www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...

Totally forgot to update: I PASSED!!!!!!
A small win after a lot of despairing the past few months with the political climate :')

Qualifying exam in a couple hours! Once it's over with I'll have to figure out a different way to distract myself from the existential dread that is US politics

YouTube video by Mike Barker Polyploidy Webinar 2 April 2025

The recording of last week's #PolyploidyWebinar featuring @raymondcast.bsky.social and @erichagen.bsky.social is now up! youtu.be/zmUyTO3jN6s

A flyer for the next Polyploidy Webinar on Wednesday, April 2, at 11 AM PDT. Featuring Raymond Castillo from Washington University presenting "Phylogenetic methods for modeling chromosome size and count" and Eric Hagen from the University of Toronto on "Using -SSE models to study diversification after neopolyploidy and paleopolyploidy"

Join us on Wednesday, April 2 at 11 AM Pacific Time for the next #PolyploidyWebinar! The last webinar of the 24-25 season will feature @raymondcast.bsky.social and @erichagen.bsky.social! Sign up (if not already!) to get the zoom: www.barkerlab.net/polyweb

A group of people holding signs as part of Stand for Science demonstration

A woman holding a sign that says Save our Science

@standupforscience.bsky.social in St. Louis!

SHARE WIDELY.
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.

With mass deportations starting today across the country, it is vitally important - for both citizens and non-citizens - to know your rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Assert it. You have the right to a lawyer. Ask for one.

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list comprehensions may never make 100% sense to me but at least the work 💀

Earlier this year my advisor @landismj.bsky.social and I published this cool work at BMB; looking at applying diffusion in macroevolutionary context for state-dependent diversification models to learn about evolutionary patterns that these models produce. #evobio

www.smb.org/news/13402507

Bayesian Least-Squares Supertrees (BLeSS): flexible inference of large time-calibrated phylogenies https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.29.625936v1 Time-calibrated phylogenies are key to macroevolutionary hypothesis testing and parameter inference,

Bayesian Least-Squares Supertrees (BLeSS): flexible inference of large time-calibrated phylogenies https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.29.625936v1

A flyer for the December 4, 2024, Polyploidy Webinar that will be at 11 AM PST on zoom. This month features Pam & Doug Soltis from the University of Florida presenting details on their new Polyploidy Integration and Innovation Institute and Trevor Faske from the US Geological Survey presenting Variance dissimilarities in mixed-ploidy genomic data cause irregular patterns in PCA and other clustering analyses. Sign up for the zoom link at https://www.barkerlab.net/polyweb

Join us on Wednesday, December 4, at 11 AM PST for the next #PolyploidyWebinar! This month we have Pam & Doug Soltis presenting on the Polyploid Integration Institute and @trevorfaske.bsky.social on analyses of mixed-ploidy data! Sign up (if not already!) to get the zoom: www.barkerlab.net/polyweb

Here's a starter pack for early career researchers in evolutionary biology. I prioritized the most-junior folks, and this list quickly filled up with undergrads, grad students, and postdocs. Might do another list later, but I'm tired. Have fun everyone! 🐒 #evobio

go.bsky.app/MzND7nX

time for end of semester despair yippee!

One of my peers and I are thinking of teaching a statistics nano-course for people in ecology and evolution, what are some statistical tests that you feel are important to your research?

also I am a queer latino whose grandparents immigrated from mexico so if that bothers you, i simply do not care! 😌