 Jeremy Brown
Research Overview
Reconstructing the historical relationships among species (or component genes,
individuals, and populations) is one of the most important goals of evolutionary
biology. These phylogenetic estimates provide a crucial framework for
understanding how morphological and molecular traits have evolved. I am
interested in both using molecular data to estimate phylogenies, as well as using
phylogenetic tools to improve our understanding of how evolution has shaped
genomes. My work seeks to develop, test, improve, and apply phylogenetic tools in
this context. In particular, what are the broad scale differences in evolutionary
patterns across genes and how can we accommodate this variation when we infer
phylogenies?
Genomes are currently being sequenced at an unprecedented rate and flooding the
field of phylogenetics with data, making the development of new tools and
approaches an absolute necessity.
Selected Publications
Brown, J.M. and A.R. Lemmon. 2007. The importance of data partitioning and the
utility of Bayes factors in Bayesian phylogenetics. Systematic Biology. 56:
643-655.
Rabeling, C., J.M. Brown, and M. Verhaagh. 2008. Newly discovered sister lineage
sheds light on early ant evolution. PNAS. 105: 14913-14917.
Brown, J.M. and R. ElDabaje. 2009. PuMA: Bayesian analysis of partitioned (and
unpartitioned) model adequacy. Bioinformatics 25: 537-538.
Lemmon, A.R., J.M. Brown, K. Stanger-Hall, and E. Moriarty Lemmon. 2009. The
effect of ambiguous data on phylogenetic estimates obtained by maximum likelihood
and Bayesian inference. Systematic Biology. 58: 130-145.
Brown, J.M., S.M. Hedtke, A.R. Lemmon, and E. Moriarty Lemmon. 2009. When trees
grow too long: Investigating the causes of highly inaccurate Bayesian
branch-length estimates. Systematic Biology. Accepted.
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