I'm happy to share this great news with you all!

This is top tier academic comedy.

Please help me spread the word: I offer a 18 month postdoctoral position to develop phylogenetic models that assess the influence of trait evolution on diversification dynamics. Details in the link, do not hesitate to contact me for further information!

Heavy is the rump that wears the crown. Introducing your Fat Bear Week 2023 champion, 128 GRAZER!!

👇🏿👇🏿

Exciting opportunity to join Washington University and the Missouri Botanical Garden through a joint appointment! Review of applications begins Oct. 15. @WUSTL @mobotgarden https://t.co/Dq1atWzPQT

Further developments will include incorporating paleogeographic data and jointly estimating divergence times/tree topology (in collaboration with Isaac Lichter Marck and Fabio Mendes). If you want to use MultiFIG for your own research, don’t hesitate to reach out!

We also applied the MultiFIG model to the South American lizard genus Liolaemus, uncovering negative distance/dispersal and area/extinction relationships.

We tested the MultiFIG model through simulations and found that it behaves well.

Then, using a dated phylogeny and tip ranges, MultiFIG can be used to estimate model parameters (like this example) representing the strength and direction of relationships between region features and biogeographic rates.

The MultiFIG model lets users incorporate data about several types of region features (categorical/quantitative and within-region/between-region) for a set of discrete regions.

We use a geographic state-dependent speciation & extinction (GeoSSE, Goldberg et al. 2011) framework to allow lineages to evolve through space and time via dispersal, extinction, within-region speciation, and between-region speciation.

There are usually several different features that might or might not impact rates of dispersal, extinction, and speciation for a particular clade. We wanted to create a phylogenetic model to estimate the simultaneous effects of these features.

Many biologists want to know whether environmental features (like distance, region size, altitude, temperature, etc.) are correlated with rates of evolutionary/biogeographic processes for their favorite clades. For example, is distance negatively correlated with dispersal?

I’m excited to share a new preprint that I wrote with @landismj! A tutorial is available at https://t.co/cTJ1xMo5pI. Feel free to DM or email for more info! 🧵 https://t.co/1FO7RBHZLt

Saw this lovely specimen at Castlewood State Park recently. Three-toed box turtle, Terrapene carolina triunguis.

@WUSTLdbbs EEB at #Evol2023!

Fantastic talk by @sean_w_mchugh on a novel approach for modeling biome shifts across phylogenies! #Evol2023

Hi everyone. I am very happy to announce that next Fall (2024), I will join the fantastic biology department at LSU @LSU_BioSci as assistant professor.