[Seminar] Models and Truth in Phylogenomics, by Rob Lanfear

How do you estimate a good phylogeny? Phylogenetic trees form the backbone of much of our understanding of evolution, so it's important we try to get them right. Many of us had hoped that the recent deluge of sequence data would help to resolve most of the difficult branches in the tree of life, but this has rarely been the case. Debates rage on, often fuelled by the observation that small changes in models or data can lead to dramatically different conclusions. In this talk, I'll introduce a number of attempts we've made to resolve these debates by improving phylogenetic inference, as well as our plans for the future.