Last week I attended a workshop organized by Hélène Morlon, Tiago Quental, and Charles Marshall on integrating data from the fossil record into phylogenetic methods. This three-day workshop was sponsored by the the France-Berkeley Fund, a cool program that provides seed grants to build partnerships between UC Berkeley researchers and French collaborators. All of the events took place at the UCMP on the UC Berkeley campus.

Hélène, Charles, and Tiago recognized the increasing interest in methods and analyses that incorporate data from fossil taxa; and since there are several of us working in this area–particularly in methods development–the need for building a collaborative network is critical. Furthermore, as methods become more and more reliant on data from the fossil record, connections between neontologists and paleontologists must be formed. Notably, a similar working group – organized by Sam Price and Lars Schmitz – was held at NESCent this past spring and was made up of an overlapping set of researchers. One result of the NESCent catalysis meeting will be a SSE Symposium at Evolution 2014 on “Reuniting fossil and extant approaches to macroevolution”.
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