Chi ZHANG Bayesian tip dating and its application
invité par Joëlle BARIDO-SOTTANI - Section Ecologie et Biologie de l’Evolution
12h
Le séminaire de Chi ZHANG (Chinese Academy of Sciences) aura lieu dans la salle Favard, IBENS 46 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris
Abstract :
Dating the tree of life is essential for understanding the evolutionary process of species and co-evolution of life and environment. Compared with the traditional stepwise approach, the Bayesian total-evidence tip-dating approach has the advantage of combining morphological characters and geological ages from fossils and morphological and molecular data from extant taxa, and incorporates uncertainties from data and parameters in the statistical inference. The method utilizes the fossilized birth-death process for the timetree and the relaxed clock model for the evolutionary rates.
This tip-dating approach has been productively applied to various biological groups to study their evolution. I will focus on recent studies on birds, pterosaurs and mammals which I have been involved in.