Joanna Masel, PI of the “Universal principles of evolutionary adaptation” project, is one of the authors of a new manuscript in Systematic Biology. “We show that the non-reversible models estimated with nQMaker are a much better fit to empirical alignments than pre-existing reversible models, across a wide range of datasets including mammals, birds, plants, fungi, and other taxa, and that the improvements in model fit scale with the size of the dataset. Notably, for the recently published plant and bird trees, these non-reversible models correctly recovered the commonly estimated root placements with very high statistical support without the need to use an outgroup.” The full article is available online here.
24th-25th March 2022, Beckmanns Hof and Zoom, Ruhr University Bochum
Several of our Purpose Project colleagues are speaking at this event, the goal of which “is to address the riddle of organismal agency through the lenses of philosophy, history, and the biological sciences. It aims to (i) clarify the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of organismal agency; (ii) contextualize this problem in the history of philosophy and biology in fruitful new directions; and (iii) delve into the consequences of embracing organismal agency for the study of development and evolution, its formal integration into biological theories, and translatability into scientific practice.”
More information, including registration, here.
Armin Shultz, coordinator of the Modelling Agency Formally cluster, recently published “Episodic Memory, Simulated Future Planning, and their Evolution” in the Review of Philosophy and Psychology with his colleague Professor Sarah Robins.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution has asked Anya Plutynski, coordinator of the Agency and Directionality in Development cluster, about co-editing a special issue. Two to four co-editors are sought to help put together a short description of the Research Topic, as well as a list of potential contributors, by mid-March.
Potential co-editors should have three or more years of postdoc experience and be based at a range of institutions and regions. Co-editors must also be able and willing to review both empirical and theoretical contributions. Please contact Anya with suggestions for topics and to express interest in collaborating as a co-editor or contributing to the special issue.
Frontiers is an Open Access publisher, so manuscripts accepted for publication would be subject to a publishing fee. There is a fee support program to help authors whose institution/funder cannot cover the full cost.
Tobias Uller and Richard Watson, PIs of the “Evolution and Organismal Goal-Directedness: Toward an Explanatory Agenda” project, along with colleagues, recently published work in BMC Ecology and Evolution. “Without overlooking the fact that adaptive plasticity is itself a product of genetic evolution, we show how past selection for plasticity can exercise a disproportionate effect on genetic evolvability and, in turn, influence the course of adaptive evolution.”
