Ana Serra Silva

YSF2025 Registration Form Welcome to the YSF2025 Registration and Abstract Submission form. This year the conference will be held online on Friday, November 14th 2025. We look forward to seeing old and new faces from across t...

📢📢📢 #YSF2025 ABSTRACT SUBMISSION CLOSES THIS SATURDAY OCT 25TH 11:59PM GMT+1 📢📢📢

If you are a student or early career researcher working on phylogenetics/taxonomy/systematics, join us online on Nov 14th for this year's (free!) Young Systematists' Forum!

REGISTER: tinyurl.com/2w5n3e8

Revised evolutionary relationships within Brachycera and the early origin of bicoid in flies Mulhair et al. uncover a functional bicoid in non-cyclorrhaphan flies, pushing the gene's origin back by ∼20 million years. Reassessing the Diptera phylogeny using the largest dataset to date permits ...

Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social

We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬

To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain).

🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy

YSF2025 Registration Form Welcome to the YSF2025 Registration and Abstract Submission form. This year the conference will be held online on Friday, November 14th 2025. We look forward to seeing old and new faces from across t...

Students (and recent graduates) working on anything phylogenetics, systematics or taxonomy-related, the abstract submission deadline for this year's (FREE ONLINE) Young Systematists' Forum approaches!

Send us your abstracts by Saturday, OCTOBER 25 11:59PM GMT+1

tinyurl.com/2w5n3e8

Interested in the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social special issue on phylogenomic discordance? tinyurl.com/v2eces3s

Two more summaries added below!

We'll return to our regularly scheduled one paper summary a week next Wednesday.

Again, all and any oversimplications are entirely my fault!

Gene flow can reveal ghost lineages Abstract. Ghost species, encompassing extinct, unknown, and unsampled taxa, vastly outnumber those typically included in phylogenetic analyses. This hidden

And, Theo Tricou, @bastien-boussau.bsky.social and colleagues illustrate how (in the absence of gene duplication/loss) reconciliation methods can identify horizontal gene transfer events from ghost species (these are species with no sampled descendants).

(4/n)

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Recombination and phylogenetic inference Abstract. I explore the problem of inferring phylogenetic trees in the presence of recombination. Two widely used approaches are considered: concatenation

Up next, Bruce Rannala reviewing how recombination is treated (or not!) by, and what biases are introduced to, multiple tree inference strategies and how ancestral recombination graphs might eliminate these biases.

TLDR - Concatenation BAD if recombination present.

(3/n)

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Poster with event details and registration QR code for The Systematics Association's Founders' Lecture.

Don't forget to register for our in-person Founders' Lecture, next Friday OCT 24 6PM at Burlington House, London.

Prof @emmateeling.bsky.social, UCD, will be talking to us on all things bat 🦇

This is a free event but it will help us gauge interest if you register. tinyurl.com/28u2u2z8

Quarterly reminder to not write posts during my commute/ before finishing my coffee... ☕

That should be 6PM Friday, OCT 24!

Do join us ON THE 24TH for the @systassn.bsky.social Founders' Lecture.

More details here: systass.org/founders-lec...

Please register or get your students to register!

I do not want to unleash nagging mode!

Don't forget to register for our (free) upcoming Founder's Lecture on Friday, Oct 24 6PM at Burlington House, London.

Prof @emmateeling.bsky.social, University College Dublin, will be talking to us about all things bats! 🦇

Registration: tinyurl.com/28u2u2z8

Details: systass.org/founders-lec...

Young Systematists’ Forum Young Systematists’ Forum An exciting setting for postgraduate students and early postdoctoral researchers to present their work to a scientific audience interested in taxonomy and systematic…

Join us Nov 14th for #YSF2025, a completely free, online conference where postgraduate students (and other early career researchers) present their work on systematics, taxonomy and/or phylogenetics.

Abstract submission closes Oct 25th!

REGISTER: tinyurl.com/2fvmmthc

systass.org/young-system...

Disclaimer: I am not associated with the journal. I have, however, been press ganged by a gaggle of (friendly but social media-shy) editors to share the articles in this special issue!

Any oversimplifications of the articles' contents are entirely my fault!

On measures of influence and discordance in phylogenomic analyses Abstract. As models are approximate descriptions of real biological processes, and data are collected often with errors and contamination, sensitivity or r

First up we have Xiyun Jiao and @zihengyang.bsky.social showing the importance of moving beyond model fit testing and embracing sensitivity testing in phylogenetics.

In other words, question your data assumptions and test for model robustness not just adequacy.

(2/n)

doi.org/10.1093/evol...

Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions Phylogenomics, the study of evolutionary relationships using genomic data, has revolutionized our understanding of the Tree of Life. As a field, phylogenomics h

If you're interested in understanding discordance in phylogenomic analyses, the @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social's special issue 'Phylogenomic Discordance: Patterns, Processes, and Solutions' is for you!

tinyurl.com/v2eces3s

I'll be sharing a few articles a week until we're through the issue! (1/n)🧪

Founders' Lecture details and registration QR code.

We are delighted to announce that this year's Founders' Lecture will be delivered by Prof. @emmateeling.bsky.social, University College Dublin!

TITLE: Bats: Genomes, phylogenies, fossils and cures?

WHEN: Friday, October 24th at 6PM

WHERE: Burlington House, London

JOIN US: tinyurl.com/28u2u2z8

Always nice to see an old friend. Now to find what shenanigans are afoot this time. 🤓

Last chance to join us next month for the #Biodiversity25 conference.

A fantastic set of speakers, mix of talks & focused workshops, and the chance to meet others in the field of biodiversity genomics 🧬

In-person registration closes next Monday 29th September!

Registration 🔗: bit.ly/4j3vAZ9

YouTube video by Systematics Association Founders' Lecture 2024 | Are we really more closely related to starfish than to earthworms?

We are nearly ready to announce this year's Founders' Lecture speaker!

In the meantime time check out @maxjtelford.bsky.social's 2024 lecture: 'Are we really more closely related to starfish than to earthworms?'

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSR5...

👀

Oh look, they're at it again...

www.theportugalnews.com/news/2025-09...

Figure showing sagittal sections of a cephalochordate and a hemichordate highlighting potentially homologous structures

My review of the evidence (morphological, embryological and molecular) for the deuterostomes clade is now available. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Young Systematists’ Forum Young Systematists’ Forum An exciting setting for postgraduate students and early postdoctoral researchers to present their work to a scientific audience interested in taxonomy and systematic…

Keep your eyes peeled, this year's edition of the Young Systematists' Forum approaches!

When: Nov 14 2025

Where: Online!

We will open registration and abstract submission soon!

Stay up to date here: systass.org/young-system...

Not sure I like the look of these clouds...

Where are these from? (Assume not NYT, since I don't remember that clue from this morning.)

Ah, the one time I want a delivery to be late, it is on track to arrive ahead of time... Guess I'll be starring at the box for the better part of a month 🛥️

Ooof, this hurts! ⛵

cdn.theoceanrace.com/images/m1825...

I'm disappointed it took me so long to notice something rather apt...

So, I abbreviated Bos taurus to BOSTA (phylip format and all), which in my first language just so happens to mean cowpat...

Not that anyone uses its literal meaning, we mostly use it as the mildest faeces-related swear word 😂

Phylogenetic tree showing Chordata (fish), Ambulacraria (acorn worm) and Protostomia (butterfly and snail) in a polytomy.

TLDR: Support for deuterostome monophyly comes from sources of systematic error (branch-length, site-rate and site-compositional heterogeneity). When these are explicitly modelled, we cannot distinguish between monophyletic and paraphyletic Deuterostomia. (12/12)

AND under the best-fit model, CAT-Poisson (CAT-GTR did not converge), we couldn't distinguish between the Deuterostomia, Orthozoa and Centroneuralia topologies for the short-branched replicate.

Thus, when we mitigate sources of systematic error, support for Deuterostomia nearly disappears. (11/12)

Lastly, we ran leave-one-out cross-validations on one short- and one long-branched taxon jackknife under the site-homogeneous LG+G, site-heterogeneous EDM+G and CAT-Poisson+G and found that as model complexity increased, support for deuterostome monophyly.

(10/12)