Dated mammal phylogeny from Phillips et al. (PNAS, 2009), and carpet python (Morelia spilota) on field trip to Cunningham's Gap
Research areas
Mammalian Evolution
1. What on Earth are monotremes? – tracing their evolution from “normal” ancestors.
2. Reconstructing marsupial evolution (with Maria Nilsson, Senckenberg Museum; Peter Prentis, QUT; Vera Weisbecker, U. Queensland).
3. Dating the major diversification of placental mammals – testing links to the dinsosaur extinction and the "Cretaceous terrestrial revolution" (with Robin Beck, U. Salford; Nicolas Lartillot, U. Lyon; Mike Lee, U. Adelaide).
4. Are marsupials intrinsically inferior to placentals (as Lillegraven suggests) or does it come down to evolutionary context differences?
Avian Evolution
1. Ratite phylogeny, biogeography and flightlessness (with Mike Bunce, Curtin University). 2. Testing for competition between birds, dinosaurs, pterosaurs and bats (with David Penny, Massey University). 3. The timescale and biogeography of avian diversification (with Daniel Ksepka, Bruce Museum). |
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Phylogenetics and molecular dating
1. Modelling morphological evolution for merging fossils into the tree of life.
2. Total evidence dating (combined molecular-morphological matrices) is interesting, but when is it useful?
3. Identifying and ameliorating DNA substitution model misspecification for inferring phylogeny and molecular dates.
Palaeobiology
1. Vertebrate extinction and diversification across the Cretaceous – Palaeogene boundary (with David Penny, Massey U.). 2. Rapid ecological diversification followed by ecological conservatism in marsupials and birds – testing the roles of competition and genetic constraints. 3. Ancient DNA from marsupials and ratites (with Mike Bunce, Curtin U.) |
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Scripts/programs
Genbank_pl is a perl script for extracting rRNA, tRNA and protein coding DNA sequences from mitochondrial genome accessions (Scott Roy, Tim White, Matt Phillips).
NicheSim is a C++ program that simulates the evolution of discrete characters in 2D niche (or morphological) space on a phylogeny. It is non-Markovian, in that evolutionary transitions can be influenced by state history or by states in other contemporaneous taxa. Several simple metrics of ecomorphospace occupation are also calculated for the simulated or observed data. (Tim White, Matt Phillips).
Genbank_pl and NicheSim are available from Matt Phillips upon request.
NicheSim is a C++ program that simulates the evolution of discrete characters in 2D niche (or morphological) space on a phylogeny. It is non-Markovian, in that evolutionary transitions can be influenced by state history or by states in other contemporaneous taxa. Several simple metrics of ecomorphospace occupation are also calculated for the simulated or observed data. (Tim White, Matt Phillips).
Genbank_pl and NicheSim are available from Matt Phillips upon request.
