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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

A Risk Assessment And Phylogenetic Approach, Culum Brown Aug 2019

A Risk Assessment And Phylogenetic Approach, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

The precautionary principal is often invoked when talking about the evidence of sentience in animals, largely because we can never be certain what any animal is thinking or feeling. Birch (2017) offers a preliminary framework for the use of the precautionary principal for animal sentience combining an epistemic rule with a decision rule. I extend this framework by adding an evolutionary phylogentic approach which spreads the burden of proof across broad taxonomic groups and a risk assessment component which magnifies the likely impact by the number of animals involved.


A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Thomas Hatzopoulos, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Catherine Putonti Oct 2017

A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Thomas Hatzopoulos, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Catherine Putonti

Konstantin Läufer

As sequencing technologies continue to drop in price and increase in throughput, new challenges emerge for the management and accessibility of genomic sequence data. We have developed a pipeline for facilitating the storage, retrieval, and subsequent analysis of molecular data, integrating both sequence and metadata. Taking a polyglot approach involving multiple languages, libraries, and persistence mechanisms, sequence data can be aggregated from publicly available and local repositories. Data are exposed in the form of a RESTful web service, formatted for easy querying, and retrieved for downstream analyses. As a proof of concept, we have developed a resource for annotated HIV-1 …


A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Thomas Hatzopoulos, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Catherine Putonti Sep 2017

A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Thomas Hatzopoulos, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Catherine Putonti

Catherine Putonti

As sequencing technologies continue to drop in price and increase in throughput, new challenges emerge for the management and accessibility of genomic sequence data. We have developed a pipeline for facilitating the storage, retrieval, and subsequent analysis of molecular data, integrating both sequence and metadata. Taking a polyglot approach involving multiple languages, libraries, and persistence mechanisms, sequence data can be aggregated from publicly available and local repositories. Data are exposed in the form of a RESTful web service, formatted for easy querying, and retrieved for downstream analyses. As a proof of concept, we have developed a resource for annotated HIV-1 …


A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Thomas Hatzopoulos, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Catherine Putonti Jan 2017

A Polyglot Approach To Bioinformatics Data Integration: A Phylogenetic Analysis Of Hiv-1, Steven Reisman, Thomas Hatzopoulos, Konstantin Laufer, George K. Thiruvathukal, Catherine Putonti

George K. Thiruvathukal

As sequencing technologies continue to drop in price and increase in throughput, new challenges emerge for the management and accessibility of genomic sequence data. We have developed a pipeline for facilitating the storage, retrieval, and subsequent analysis of molecular data, integrating both sequence and metadata. Taking a polyglot approach involving multiple languages, libraries, and persistence mechanisms, sequence data can be aggregated from publicly available and local repositories. Data are exposed in the form of a RESTful web service, formatted for easy querying, and retrieved for downstream analyses. As a proof of concept, we have developed a resource for annotated HIV-1 …


The Fossilized Birth–Death Process For Coherent Calibration Of Divergence-Time Estimates, Tracy A. Heath, John P. Huelsenbeck, Tanja Stadler Jul 2014

The Fossilized Birth–Death Process For Coherent Calibration Of Divergence-Time Estimates, Tracy A. Heath, John P. Huelsenbeck, Tanja Stadler

Tracy Heath

Time-calibrated species phylogenies are critical for addressing a wide range of questions in evolutionary biology, such as those that elucidate historical biogeography or uncover patterns of coevolution and diversification. Because molecular sequence data are not informative on absolute time, external data—most commonly, fossil age estimates—are required to calibrate estimates of species divergence dates. For Bayesian divergence time methods, the common practice for calibration using fossil information involves placing arbitrarily chosen parametric distributions on internal nodes, often disregarding most of the information in the fossil record. We introduce the “fossilized birth–death” (FBD) process—a model for calibrating divergence time estimates in a …


Boosting The Performance Of Bayesian Divergence Time Estimation With The Phylogenetic Likelihood Library, Diego Darriba, Andre Aberer, Tomas Flouri, Tracy A. Heath, Fernando Izquierdo-Carrasco, Alexandros Stamatakis Apr 2013

Boosting The Performance Of Bayesian Divergence Time Estimation With The Phylogenetic Likelihood Library, Diego Darriba, Andre Aberer, Tomas Flouri, Tracy A. Heath, Fernando Izquierdo-Carrasco, Alexandros Stamatakis

Tracy Heath

We present a substantially improved and parallelized version of DPPDiv, a software tool for estimating species divergence times and lineage-specific substitution rates on a fixed tree topology. The improvement is achieved by integrating the DPPDiv code with the Phylogenetic Likelihood Library (PLL), a fast, optimized, and parallelized collection of functions for conducting likelihood computations on phylogenetic trees. We show that, integrating the PLL into a likelihoodbased application is straight-forward since it took the first author (DD) a programming effort of only one month, without having prior knowledge of DPPDiv, nor the PLL. We achieve sequential speedups that range between a …


Maximum Likelihood Estimates Of Species Trees: How Accuracy Of Phylogenetic Inference Depends Upon The Divergence History And Sampling Design, John Mccormack, Huateng Huang, L. Knowles Sep 2009

Maximum Likelihood Estimates Of Species Trees: How Accuracy Of Phylogenetic Inference Depends Upon The Divergence History And Sampling Design, John Mccormack, Huateng Huang, L. Knowles

John E. McCormack

The understanding that gene trees are often in discord with each other and with the species trees that contain them has led researchers to methods that incorporate the inherent stochasticity of genetic processes in the phylogenetic estimation procedure. Recently developed methods for species-tree estimation that not only consider the retention and sorting of ancestral polymorphism but also quantify the actual probabilities of incomplete lineage sorting are expected to provide an improvement over earlier summary-statistic based approaches that discard much of the information content of gene trees. However, these new methods have yet to be tested on truly challenging evolutionary histories …


Road-Killed Bats, Highway Design, And The Commuting Ecology Of Bats, Amy L. Russell, Calvin M. Butchkoski, Leslie Saidak, Gary F. Mccracken Jun 2009

Road-Killed Bats, Highway Design, And The Commuting Ecology Of Bats, Amy L. Russell, Calvin M. Butchkoski, Leslie Saidak, Gary F. Mccracken

Amy L. Russell

During a Myotis sodalis telemetry project in Pennsylvania, USA, in 2000, road-killed M. lucifugus were recorded and a highway survey was initiated. The purpose of this study was to assess the level of mortality from road kills on this colony, verify which species were being killed in traffic and examine the influence of canopy height and structure on flight behavior. On 10 evenings between 15 May and 26 July 2001, bats were counted as they emerged from day roosts and crossed a heavily trafficked highway en route to foraging areas. A total of 26 442 bats were observed cross- ing …


The Evolution Of Flight In Insects: Insights From Mayflies And Dna, T. Heath Ogden Dec 2008

The Evolution Of Flight In Insects: Insights From Mayflies And Dna, T. Heath Ogden

T. Heath Ogden

No abstract provided.


Evolution, Jonathan Eisen Dec 2006

Evolution, Jonathan Eisen

Jonathan A. Eisen Ph.D.

No abstract provided.


Working At The Interface Of Phylogenetics And Population Genetics: A Biogeographical Analysis Of Triaenops Spp. (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae, Amy L. Russell, J. Ranivo, E. P. Palkovacs, S. M. Goodman, A. D. Yoder Dec 2006

Working At The Interface Of Phylogenetics And Population Genetics: A Biogeographical Analysis Of Triaenops Spp. (Chiroptera: Hipposideridae, Amy L. Russell, J. Ranivo, E. P. Palkovacs, S. M. Goodman, A. D. Yoder

Amy L. Russell

New applications of genetic data to questions of historical biogeography have revolutionized our understanding of how organisms have come to occupy their present distributions. Phylogenetic methods in combination with divergence time estimation can reveal biogeo- graphical centres of origin, differentiate between hypotheses of vicariance and dispersal, and reveal the directionality of dispersal events. Despite their power, however, phylo- genetic methods can sometimes yield patterns that are compatible with multiple, equally well-supported biogeographical hypotheses. In such cases, additional approaches must be integrated to differentiate among conflicting dispersal hypotheses. Here, we use a synthetic approach that draws upon the analytical strengths of …


Taxonomic Differences Between Birds And Mammals In Their Responses To Chemical Irritants, Russell Mason, Larry Clark, Pankaj Shah Jan 1992

Taxonomic Differences Between Birds And Mammals In Their Responses To Chemical Irritants, Russell Mason, Larry Clark, Pankaj Shah

Larry Clark

Ninety-five products are registered with the u.s. Environmental Pro­ tection Agency as bird damage control chemicals, but 38 (40%) are non­ lethal chemical repellents (Eschen and Schafer, 1986). Of these products, the active ingredients in 27 (71%) are methiocarb (a physiologic repellent that acts through food avoidance learning) or polybutene (a tactile repel­ lent). In general, chemical repellents are effective either because of aversive sensory effects (irritation), or because of post-ingestional ma­ laise (sickness). If the former, then chemicals are usually stimulants of trigeminal pain receptors (i.e., undifferentiated free nerve endings) in the nose, mouth, and eyes (Mason and Otis, …