Exploring the Tree of Life - Mysterious pits, old beetles, and the joy of discovery by Dr. David Maddison, Rice Professor in Systematic Entomology, Department of Integrative Biology, Oregon State University
I cannot be more happy about my decision to attend the first department seminar this fall semester! Knowing nothing about the carabid beetles or insect systematics doesn’t stop me from enjoying this talk, A LOT.
Dr. Maddison first explained the conceptual framework of the Tree of Life project, by drawing analogy to spacial and earth geographical maps, and then reviewed the methodology and the first “tree” draw by Darwin. From his phylogenetic work on Bembidion beetles, he shared two cool stories, both about unusual journeys toward nifty scientific findings. The first one is starting from an unexpected monophyletic clade based on molecular data to discover previously neglected but astonishing morphological traits. The second one is from “poor” sequencing recovery of mt genes from over 100 year old museum specimen towards the discovery of lineage-specific copy number variations that can be used to infer the correct lineages. At last, Dr. Maddison talked about an undergraduate class he designed and taught. Students were fully engaged to collect specimen, extract DNA, conduct phylogenetic analysis, trouble shooting and ultimately name new Bembidion species. How cool is that!
His lab website is http://david.bembidion.org.