Jeffrey P. Townsend

TL;DR: The results of the divergence time analyses are congruent with the palaeontological record, supporting a major radiation of crown birds in the wake of the Cretaceous–Palaeogene (K–Pg) mass extinction.

TL;DR: It is suggested that for many prokaryotes, the boundaries between species are fuzzy, and therefore the principles of population genetics must be broadened so that they can be applied to higher taxonomic categories.

TL;DR: A 6-gene, 420-species maximum-likelihood phylogeny of Ascomycota, the largest phylum of Fungi, and a phylogenetic informativeness analysis of all 6 genes and a series of ancestral character state reconstructions support a terrestrial, saprobic ecology as ancestral are presented.

TL;DR: This measure of phylogenetic informativeness provides a quantitative measure of the capacity of a gene to resolve soft polytomies and conveys the utility of the addition of characters a phylogenetic study and provides a basis for deciding whether appropriate phylogenetic power has been applied to a polytomy that is proposed to be a rapid radiation.

TL;DR: It is shown that inferred geographic range of a fungal species depends upon the method of species recognition and that microbial organisms generally have fewer morphological characters, and that the rate of morphological change will be slower for organisms with less elaborate development and fewer cells.