Ziv E. Lieberman

Series of plots and graphs illustrating the five different evolution model configurations studied. They correspond to a range of simple to (moving down the page) increasingly complex and parameter-rich models of morphological evolution.

Assessing the impact of character evolution models on phylogenetic and macroevolutionary inferences from fossil data onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @daveyfwright.bsky.social @datadryad.bsky.social

. . .The position here taken seems so obviously unwarranted as to hardly merit discussion." Similarly, "Under No. 41: No one accepts the idea that the type of the genus is the sum of the species."

"We must dissent, however, from Rule 38 in so far as it relates to 'co-types,' this part being to the effect that when a species is 'described from more than one specimen, no single one being selected as the type, the 'type' in this case is the 'sum of the co-types'. . .

I'm interested in this too. All I can say is that it predates 1878, as Strickland's Rules for Zoological Nomenclature refers to types. The Merton Rules in 1896 had some whacky concepts about them, excoriated by Coues and Allen in 1897. . .

Dean Koontz is Fred Willard in a 2009 Bieber wig. I knew it all along.

...we raise some points that are more broadly relevant. These regard study design, model implementation & testing, and interpretation, in particular relating to taxon and site downsampling, model fit, & sensitivity tests. We also clarify the common conflation of compositional and site heterogeneity.

Ant phylogeny is not resolved by the application of site heterogeneous models - Communications Biology Communications Biology - Ant phylogeny is not resolved by the application of site heterogeneous models

Dear colleagues,
I'd like to share a short new contribution on the application of highly complex site-heterogeneous models, in particular CAT-GTR, to phylogenomic inference. While this paper arises from a recent publication on the early-branching topology of ants...

Out now in Biology Letters, my latest paper tackles an apparently simple question: how many characters are needed to reconstruct a phylogeny? TL;DR: in most cases between 100 and 500, more than a substantial portion of morphological datasets, but the story is more complex... doi.org/10.1098/rsbl...

Absolutely beautiful figures in this one

In the Zoological code, the relevant articles are 27, which forbids marks like hyphens except when Art. 32.5.2.4.3 applies: "If the first element is a Latin letter used to denote descriptively a character of the taxon, it must be retained and connected to the remainder of the name by a hyphen."

Here is a confocal stack of a clonal raider ant antenna from first author and FISHerman extraordinaire Giacomo Glotzer. You can see the densely packed cell bodies of olfactory sensory neurons, along with fluorescent signal from two different odorant receptors and an intergenic region.

Interesting! I'll have to look into this too.

Have you found it captures color accurately? Our 970-F seems to produce images that are overly red compared to how the specimens look under a microscope. Tampering with the color balance in the Keyence software hasn't been super fruitful.

Which of the VHX models are you using?

Estimating waiting distances between genealogy changes under a Multi-Species Extension of the Sequentially Markov Coalescent Abstract. Genomes are composed of a mosaic of segments inherited from different ancestors, each separated by past recombination events. Consequently, genea

super excited to share this big project with @daeaton.bsky.social out now in Systematic Biology! We derived distributions for -- given an arbitrary species tree model -- how far you have to move along a genome before observing a change in the underlying genealogy: doi.org/10.1093/sysb...

Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution Abstract. Intraspecific phenotypic variation provides the basic substrate upon which the evolutionary processes that give rise to morphological innovation,

Excited to share a new paper! "Sorting of ancestral polymorphism and its impact on morphological phylogenetics and macroevolution". Part of some work I've been doing on modelling the evolution of polymorphic traits in fossil echinoderms.

academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...

I've found myself taking multiple versions of some shots under different diffuser, lighting (and zoom) settings. In some ways the punctation here is more visible under the hard light!

The Privacy Act and Reducation [sic] act do not supercede the laws in 50 CFR (14,etc). Guidelines written on the eDec instructions may have been followed 30 or even 5 years ago, but today boxes without a 3-177 document attached on the outside are being siezed and destroyed by CBP and USFWS, especially coming through the NY office. CAS has lost one package from China already. When they sieze a package they do not notify you, rather they wait 180 days until the grace period has expired for us to submit a 3-177, and then notify you of your violation and seizure. Our petitionthrough the NY district court was met with silence.

"Further notes about the CFR - it's written very confusingly because in one section we are explicitly exempt. However, in another, all wildlife transactions must be declared at time of crossing event. And since 50 CFR 14 is before 50 CFR 17, the current interpretation is less forgiving: all wildlife must be declared upon entry or exit. Only then do we have 190 days to amend the 3-177 with updated determinations. The current interpretation of the NY office is such that declaration = 3-177. The box we had confiscated was declared as insects for museum work, but did not have an "official" declaration. All of the CFR's are written in such a way as to be open for interpretation by any agent, which until lately has been permissive and leaned towards the exemption"

International shipments and museum loans: some helpful, aggravating notes from Chris on the ECN listserv that I'm leaving here for future reference.

One end of massive canvas banner showing phylogeny of all fungi, to the best of our current knowledge

Arrived at Powdermill to give a talk about fungus beetles, they have truly rolled out the red carpet

1)
Branching morphogenesis is fundamental to animal development, shaping complex organs like lungs, kidneys, and vascular networks. Gills are another highly branched organ. Yet, the developmental processes behind gill formation in zebrafish remain poorly understood.

#zebrafish #gills #microscopy

The Mesquite icon shown, as a Mesquite leaf against a black background, and as a leave against the sun and a blue sky.

Mesquite 4 beta released! Many new features, esp. phylogenomic. Check out the trailer and longer video on the home page: www.mesquiteproject.org, and use the download link there to get a copy.

Feedback welcome! Ask and discuss on our new Google Group (groups.google.com/g/mesquite-p...).

that's just their osmeterium

Have you found the 3D reconstruction to be worth looking into? For all our pointed specimens it just makes nonsense.

Mmmmmmmmm models

I see, the bolopsid an't. . .I love biodiversity p__p

ah-ha! you truly see what I could not, my mind clouded by unapostrophized ants. thank you.

@apsciencebylyn.bsky.social important taxonomic question: are dryinids mopes, gargoyles, or something else entirely?

Our global phylogeny of Eurytomidae is now published in Systematic Entomology @respublications.bsky.social

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Anyone know how to specify priors on exchangeabilities and stationary frequencies for GTR in BASEML (PAML)? o.o

Here is the gall (ROUND). . .