Speaker: Jenny Wilson & Aaron Smith

Title: Bootstrap methods for evaluating phylogenetic trees

Abstract:
Recent advances in DNA and protein sequencing technologies have
facilitated great strides in the field of phylogenetics – the inference
of the evolutionary relationships between groups of species, typically
represented in a phylogenetic tree. For the past 20 years, the bootstrap
has been widely used by researchers to assess confidence in these
phylogenies. In this talk, we will introduce the basic theory involved in
phylogenetic trees and the algorithms used for their construction. We will
then discuss the bootstrap method introduced by Felsenstein in 1985, how
it is used, and some of the criticisms that have been made of his methods.
The talk will assume no background in phylogenetic tree construction.