Virtual Workshop:  Spatial Phylogenetics
Date: October 12 & 13 (10 am to 1 pm PST each day)
Organizers:  Israel Borokini, Kyle Rosenblad, Matthew Kling
Spatial phylogenetics is an emerging field focused on characterizing how the tree of life is distributed geographically. Spatial phylogenetic analyses combine an evolutionary tree with data on species geographic ranges, and can characterize a range of spatial patterns including areas of phylogenetic diversity and endemism, turnover-based phenomena like beta diversity and evolutionary regions, and priority areas for conservation of biodiversity. These approaches can be used to add important evolutionary context to traditional species-based biodiversity analyses, or to add geographic dimensions to traditional phylogenetic research.
This workshop will provide a conceptual introduction to spatial phylogenetics, and hands-on training in the key software packages for implementing spatial phylogenetic analysis.
  • Day 1 will include an introductory lecture (1 hour), and a tutorial on the graphical point-and-click software program Biodiverse (2 hours).
  • Day 2 will comprise a tutorial on spatial phylogenetic workflows and packages in R (3 hours).
  • Both days will include hands-on experimentation with example datasets. We will cover basic diversity measures, randomization tests for statistical significance, turnover-based analyses such as phylogenetic regionalization, and basic conservation prioritization.
This workshop is designed for biogeographers, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and conservation scientists, at different career stages.
Expectations:
Participants are expected to have intermediate R working experience.
The Biodiverse software section of the workshop is designed for PC users, as Biodiverse is not currently maintained for Mac. Mac users are welcome to try the exercises on their own machines, but they may encounter errors that we will not be able to resolve during the workshop.
Registration will open September 15, 2022 – sign up at: https://www.biogeography.org/what-we-offer/workshops/
A limited number of waivers are available for developing countries.