Vegetation Function Network supported by Australian Research Council and Landcare Research NZ
32. Calibrating the evolutionary history of southern hemisphere plant clades

Organised by Maria Gandolfo, Cornell University; Peter Wilf, Pennsylvania State University; David Cantrill, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne

First meeting was held at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
28 May - 4 June 2008.

POTENTIAL PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE
David Cantrill, palaeobotany, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
Maria Gandolfo, palaeobotany, L. H. Baliey Hortorium, Cornell University, USA
Peter Wilf, palaeobotany, Pennsylvania State University
Raymond Carpenter, palaeobotany, University of Adelaide
Herve Sauquet, molecular phylogenetic reconstruction, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK
Daphne Lee, invertebrate palaeontology, University of Otago, NZ
Lindell Bromham, molecular dating, Australian National University, Canberra
Greg Jordan, Australian fossil record, University of Tasmania, Hobart
Simon Ho, molecular dating techniques, Australian National University, Canberra
Daniel Murphy, molecular phylogenetic reconstruction, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne
Michael Bayly, Rutaceae, Myrtaceae, Plantaginaceae and NZ extant flora, University of Melbourne
Frank Udovicic, Myrtaceae, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne
Gillian Brown, Ingae, Mimosaceae, Ericaceae, University of Melbourne
Kale Sniderman, Monash University

May 08 >

 

The first meeting of this working group was held on the 28 May to the 4 June 2008 at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. The meeting started with a day of overview talks from the different disciplines represented so that participants could gain a general understanding of the approaches used, limitations, inherent assumptions, and a better feel for the language of each discipline. This provided a sound foundation for the rest of the workshop. The workshop then moved on to scoping out the issues around molecular dating and the use of fossils as calibration points. This resulted in a set of questions that related to both the assumptions underlying the fossils and geology that create an inherent dating uncertainty, and molecular sequence data and software programmes used to analyse the data.

Outcomes of the Meeting
Google docs has been used to get a first pass at the paper. This seems to be a good mechanism for assembling a whole lot of contributions without going through the complications of people working on multiple versions and copies with a coordinator bringing everything together. The model used is for everyone to make the necessary contributions as outlined in the first steps before it is downloaded and put into a good format.

During the course of the workshop a multigene dataset for the Fagales was assembled and edited for analysis; preliminary analyses were run to see if the approach would work; and a set of scenarios were discussed that could be used to test.

Last updated September 2008