Shannon M. Hedtke

TL;DR: Thorough taxon sampling is one of the most practical ways to improve the accuracy of phylogenetic estimates, as well as the accuracyof biological inferences that are based on these phylogenetic trees.

TL;DR: A long-term study of relative rates of change for an entire regional bee fauna in the northeastern United States, based on >30,000 museum records representing 438 species shows that despite marked increases in human population density and large changes in anthropogenic land use, aggregate native species richness declines were modest outside of the genus Bombus.

TL;DR: It is argued that by addressing this source of conflict between genes, fewer genes may be needed to return an accu rate phylogeny when taxa are added to the analysis, and fewer genes are needed to achieve accuracy.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that inaccurate branch-length estimates result from either poor mixing of MCMC chains or posterior distributions with excessive weight at long tree lengths, and a formula is provided to calculate an exponential rate parameter for the branch- length prior that should eliminate inference of biased branch lengths in many cases.

TL;DR: This study affirms the monophyly of each bee family, sister-taxa relationships between Apidae and Megachilidae (the ‘long-tongued bees’), between Collettidae and Stenotritidae, and between Colletidae + StenOTritidae and Halictidae, as well as support Melittidae as sister to the remaining bees.