Faculty of Science

Objectives

This course covers the basic methods of taxonomic and phylogenetic analysis and their application in the field such as systematic, comparative biology and evolution. Lectures will emphasize the logical basis and computational details of various tree building algorithms and associated methods of hypothesis testing, as well as novel applications of phylogenetics analysis in parasitology. Computer-based labs will give students to implement these methods using variety of phylogenetic software.

Contents

Introduction to phylogenetics analysis: trees, characters, cladistics, parsimony. Distance methods: models of morphological, nucleotide and protein evolution. Sequence alignement, gap, gap-coding, clustal. Maximum likelihood theory and methods, systematic versus random error; the long branch attraction problem and performance of phylogenetics methods. Hypothesis testing, tree comparisons and statistical tests. Gene trees, species trees and coalescent. Lineage sorting and multilocus methods. Parasite systematic in the 21st century: opportunities and obstacles.