Beth Shapiro

TL;DR: The Bayesian skyline plot is introduced, a new method for estimating past population dynamics through time from a sample of molecular sequences without dependence on a prespecified parametric model of demographic history, and a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling procedure is described that efficiently samples a variant of the generalized skyline plot, given sequence data.

TL;DR: A genome-scale phylogenetic analysis of 48 species representing all orders of Neoaves recovered a highly resolved tree that confirms previously controversial sister or close relationships and identifies the first divergence in Neoaves, two groups the authors named Passerea and Columbea.

TL;DR: This work investigated an efficient alternative to standard nucleotide substitution models, in which codon position (CP) is incorporated into the model, and determined the most appropriate model for alignments of 177 RNA virus genes and 106 yeast genes.

TL;DR: Thealyses suggest that the Equus lineage giving rise to all contemporary horses, zebras and donkeys originated 4.0–4.5 million years before present, twice the conventionally accepted time to the most recent common ancestor of the genus Equus, and supports the contention that Przewalski's horses represent the last surviving wild horse population.

TL;DR: The Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) as mentioned in this paper is an international effort to generate high quality, complete reference genomes for all of the roughly 70,000 extant vertebrate species and to help to enable a new era of discovery across the life sciences.