Literature Category


Evolution Taxonomy has a history of conflict and eccentricity, and the entry of new molecular technologies into the world of tiny pins and museum specimens hasn’t always been smooth. When sequencing was expensive and time consuming, the question was “which species should we do next?” Competition for funding and lab space was brisk.With advances in both computing and Next-Generation sequencing, the speed and cost of sequencing dropped enough that scientists can band together and ask bigger questions. Brian Wiegmann of North Carolina State University (Author #74) put this elegantly: “It’s not enough to just catalog the books in the library; we want to understand their contents.”


  • Response to Comment on “Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution.”

    Abstract

    Tong et al. comment on the accuracy of the dating analysis presented in our work on the phylogeny of insects and provide a reanalysis of our data. They replace log-normal priors with uniform priors and add a “roachoid” fossil as a calibration point. Although the reanalysis provides an interesting alternative viewpoint, we maintain that our choices were appropriate. Paper Link

    Sum Please click here to get more details

    • Species: 103
    • Samples: 103
    • Data: 327.20 GB
    • Genes: 0
  • Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution

    Abstract

    Insects are the most speciose group of animals, but the phylogenetic relationships of many major lineages remain unresolved. We inferred the phylogeny of insects from 1478 protein-coding genes. Phylogenomic analyses of nucleotide and amino acid sequences, with site-specific nucleotide or domain-specific amino acid substitution models, produced statistically robust and congruent results resolving previously controversial phylogenetic relations hips. We dated the origin of insects to the Early Ordovician [~479 million years ago (Ma)], of insect flight to the Early Devonian (~406 Ma), of major extant lineages to the Mississippian (~345 Ma), and the major diversification of holometabolous insects to the Early Cretaceous. Our phylogenomic study provides a comprehensive reliable scaffold for future comparative analyses of evolutionary innovations among insects. Paper Link

    Sum Please click here to get more details

    • Species: 103
    • Samples: 103
    • Data: 327.20 GB
    • Genes: 0