The workshop was introductory, aimed at thesis students/postdocs/staff with some familiarity with DNA sequence data, but who wanted to increase their awareness of issues in and methods of comparative evolutionary analysis. The workshop included an introduction to different comparative approaches (distance, parsimony, ML) their philosophy, assumptions, and parameters (GC content, among-site rate heterogeneity, tv:ti, syn:nonsyn, weighting, statistical support) and some general relevant thoughts about molecular evolution (saturation, orthology, coalescence, lineage sorting).

After the tea-break, Marty Kennedy demonstrated the implementation of these algorithms in a single comprehensive soon-to-be-released beta version of the package PAUP*4.0 (Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony) written by Dave Swofford at the Smithsonian. Graham also distributed a short list of review-style references in the area and information on purchasing PAUP.

The workshop was supported by the Research Theme: Gene Structure & Function and the CGR. Enrolment was restricted to 24 participants and it was fully booked.

Graham Wallis
Senior Lecturer in Genetics
Department of Zoology
(Associate Editor, Molecular Ecology)