Nytt föredrag hos Stockholm Phylogenomics Group (www.phylogenomics.se), Fredag 19/4 kl 14-15 @ Science for Life Laboratory i Solna.

”Dear all,

I am happy to present Alexandre Bouchard in the SPG seminar series.

Place: Floor 2 lunchroom of Science for Life Laboratory

Date: Friday, April 19

Time: 14:00

Title: Phylogenetic Sequential Monte Carlo

Abstract: Bayesian phylogenetic methods rely on accurate approximations of intractable expectations over the space of phylogenies, a problem that has been traditionally approached almost exclusively using Markov chain Monte Carlo samplers. However, the advent of large scale phylogenetic problems and new high resolution models calls for complementary approaches. In this talk, I will describe one such complementary approach based on Sequential Monte Carlo methods. I will demonstrate the flexibility that can be achieved using extensions of standard particle filters, and show different applications we are currently working on. I will also describe a new method that we have developed to parallelize SMC algorithms, entangled Monte Carlo. This technique, based on the particle genealogy, can be applied to parallelize SMC calculations while keeping communication costs between nodes low.

/Lars Arvestad”

Seminar: Collecting without being arrested

14 March 2013

Swedish Museum of Natural History (NRM), Locality: Lilla Hörsalen

The seminar deals with the implications of the Convention on Biological Diversity and ‘Access and Benefit Sharing’ (ABS) and the Nagoya protocol for natural history collections and scientific collecting and research, relevant to researchers in life sciences and collection personnel. Issues raised will address how to legally collect scientific specimens and samples in foreign countries, how to assure to follow the regulations when working with loans and donations in collection management, and how the implementation of the Nagoya protocol into EU and Swedish legislation is progressing.

Preliminary programme

13.00 Per Ericson, Science director, NRM. Welcome and Introduction to the seminar.

13.10 Börje Alriksson, Ministry of the Environment. A new EU regulation on ABS and its Swedish implementation.

13:30 China Williams, CBD Education Officer, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. Legal aspects of access to collections: tools for implementing the CBD.

14.20 – 14.50 Coffee break

14.50 Mari Källersjö, Director of Gothenburg Botanical Garden. IPEN – an exchange network for botanic gardens for non-commercial exchange of plant material, based on the CBD.

15.10 Panel discussion and questions.

16.00 Closing the seminar

Very welcome!

OBS!! Please register latest 8 March to: Thomas.Lyrholm@nrm.se

Dear members of Svenska Systematikföreningen

I am happy to inform you that the BioSyst.EU council decided that the responsibility for arranging the next meeting (August 2017) went to us, Svenska Systematikföreningen. This also means that our chairperson (Livia Wanntorp) will be spokesperson for Biosyst.eu until then. There is a prospect for arranging the conference in Göteborg (see attached pdf).

Bengt

Hi,

for p.h.d students and masterstudents that’s going to the congress februari 2013, we thought to rent an apartment to reduce the living cost during the congress. We are current 4 people from the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers, but we would like to have more people if it’s going to be worth renting. If you are interested let us know either by e-mail or reply on this post.

Jonna Eriksson : jonna.sophia.eri@hotmail.com
Ruud Scharn: ruud.scharn@gmail.com

Best Regards,
Jonna & Ruud

The Research School in Biosystematics – ForBio – is happy to welcome you to its third annual meeting March 4-6 2013 in Oslo. This year we have extended the meeting to three days to allow more members to present their research.

We especially encourage the members of ForBio and their supervisors to participate. ForBio covers travel and accommodation costs for members, and as usual there’s no conference fee 🙂

More information on registration and the program will soon be available at www.forbio.uio.no/events/meeting

The early bird registration and the abstract submission of the conference Global Systematics! from Feb 18th to 22nd in Vienna ends on October 31st.
For registration, please visit our website.
There you find also information on the programme, accommodation, and our BioSyst.EU special discount on Austrian Airline Flights (15%).

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any doubts or queries.

As a small teaser we are glad to confirm John Wiens from Stony Brook University as plenary speaker of the conference!

2nd meeting of the Network for Neotropical Biogeography

Theme: Integrating Neotropical Research

Venue: Montgomery Botanical Center, Coral Gables, Miami, Florida, USA

Date: January 14^th, 2013 (immediately after the 6th Biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society)

Organizers: Christine Bacon and Alexandre Antonelli (http://antonelli-lab.net)

Rationale: Tropical America (the Neotropics) offers a splendid opportunity for studying evolution and biogeography. The region’s outstanding biodiversity, its comparatively well-known geological history, the relative ease of travelling and conducting fieldwork (with Spanish as a lingua franca), and the rapid increase in highly competent Latin American biologists and well-equipped institutions, all contribute to making the Neotropics a great research arena for a new generation of students and established researchers alike.

Despite an increasing amount of interest there is limited coordination and interactions among independent research groups. This is unfortunate given the scientific and spatial dimensions of Neotropical research and the scarce funding available. This one-day meeting aims at improving this situation by bringing together representatives for as many research groups as possible working on Neotropical biogeography and evolution – regardless of methodology, data source, spatial/temporal scale, or organismal group studied. Talks will therefore be welcome from the fields of molecular phylogenetics, paleontology, ecology, etc.

Each research group will be given a time slot (e.g., 20 minutes) to present their current and planned activities, which will be followed by discussion for feedback and possible interactions with the other participants (e.g. joint fieldwork, material exchange, scholarships, etc). The presentations can be done by each group’s PI and/or group members.

There is no need to submit an abstract; but you must send a title (preferably the project title) and the number of other attendees from your lab group to confirm your participation to Christine Bacon as soon as possible, and by October 31^st, at the latest. Please await a confirmation for the symposium before booking any extra hotel nights or flights, as the maximum number of participants is restricted to 60 (due to space constraints).

Transportation will be arranged between the IBC 2013 partner hotel (Newport Beachside Resort; http://www.newportbeachsideresort.com/) and the meeting site (Montgomery Botanical Center; http://www.montgomerybotanical.org/).

The meeting fee will be calculated depending on the number of registered participants but will be kept as low as possible. A separate fee will apply for the dinner (a Cuban fiesta to not miss!).

Feel free to distribute this announcement to anyone who could be potentially interested!

Questions and comments can be directed to Christine Bacon (christinedbacon [at] gmail.com).

(From www.phylogenomics.se/News)

Onsdagen den 26 september klockan 15.15 håller Sebastian Höhna, Stockholms universitet, ett seminarium med titeln / On Wednesday September 26 at 15.15, Sebastina Höhna from Stockholm University will give a seminar with the title:

Estimating non-constant species diversification rates and patterns under incomplete, systematic species sampling.

Sammanfattning / Abstact:
The macro-evolutionary process of species diversity is commonly modeled using a birth-death branching process. Here I consider the class of processes where each species alive at time t has the same speciation rate lambda(t) and the extinction rate mu(t). The questions I aim to answer are: Did the rates change over time? How did the rates change over time? Where there times of mass-extinction and/or rapid radiations?

Recent extensions include specific rate functions (e.g. exponential decreasing/increasing) and random species sampling. In this talk I will present the likelihood equations for any time-dependent rate function (e.g. with one or several modes) and systematic species sampling (e.g. one species per family). I will show the estimates of the speciation rate and extinction rate over time for the complete order of mammals. Additionally, I will present a second approach for the derivation of the likelihood which can be used for fast simulation of reconstructed phylogenetic trees for:

a) a fixed time of the process,
b) a fixed number of sampled species and
c) a fixed number of sampled species and time of the process.

Lokal  /  Place: Cramerrummet (rum 306)  /  Cramér room (room 306), hus /  house 6; Kräftriket. Karta/Directions: http://www.su.se/english/about/campus/maps/kraftriket