Dear all,

there’s no meeting tomorrow. Last week was also our last meet this spring.

People who would be interested in some kind of spring/summer excursion, contact me, and give ideas.

Thank you all for the past year!

Best,
Allu

Dear All,

Next week in Kurtén club, Dr Chris Venditti will be giving a talk in the club, titled:

Understanding the evolutionary paths to morphological diversity

Time & Loc.:

16.00, 22.5.2012, C108 Physicum

Chris is a lecturer in evolutionary biology from the University of Hull (UK). His research focuses on understanding large scale patterns and processes underlying phenotypic evolution across organismal groups. His research utilizes phylogenetic trees of both extant and extinct taxa, and involves understanding, assessing and developing phylogenetic and comparative methods.

His recent publications include:

Venditti, C., Meade, A. and Pagel, M. Multiple routes to animal diversity. 2011. Nature, 479:393-396.
Capellini, I., Venditti, C. and Barton, R. A. 2010. Phylogeny and metabolic scaling in mammals. Ecology, 91:2783–2793

Venditti, C., Meade, A. and Pagel, M. 2010. Phylogenies reveal new interpretation of speciation and the Red Queen. Nature, 463:349-352

Venditti, C. and Pagel, M. 2010. Speciation as an active force in promoting genetic evolution. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 25(1):14-20

Welcome!

Dear all,

tomorrow we will have a group meeting / conversation session.

If you have interesting articles that consider your or the groups work, feel free to bring them with you.

Time & Loc.:
16.00, 15.5.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome,
Allu

Dear all,

tomorrow we will have a group meeting / conversation session.

If you have interesting articles that consider your or the groups work, feel free to bring them with you.

Time & Loc.:
16.00, 8.5.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome,
Allu

Dear all,

tomorrow we will have a group meeting / conversation session. Mikael will also talk a bit about the Lamont meeting he was in and we can also return to Ferhat’s topic from last week.

If you have interesting articles that consider your or the groups work, feel free to bring them with you.

Time & Loc.:
16.00, 24.4.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome,
Allu

Dear all,

next Tuesday, Ferhat Kaya will give a small insert about one of their projects and is hoping for good feedback and discussion.

Time & Loc.:
16.00, 17.4.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome,
Allu

Dear all,

tomorrow we will have a group meeting / conversation session.

If you have interesting articles that consider your or the groups work, feel free to bring them with you.

Time & Loc.:
16.00, 10.4.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome,
Allu

Dear all,

Greetings from Kenya! We’re back and would like to share our experiences from Nairobi with you.

Time & Loc.:
16.00, 3.4.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome,
Allu

Greetings.

This tuesday, there will be a group meeting / discussion session.

Time & Location:
16.00, 27.3.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome

-Anton

Greetings.

Next Tuesday, Ian Corfe will give a talk about a paper that came out on Wednesday:

“Adaptive radiation of multituberculate mammals before the extinction of dinosaurs”

(Or as the Daily Mail in the UK entitled it:

“Revealed: the secret of the peaceful beaver-like mammals which lived alongside the
dinosaurs for 20 million years”)

Time & Location:
16.00, 20.3.2012, C108 Physicum

Welcome

—Anton

Gregory P. Wilson, Alistair R. Evans, Ian J. Corfe, Peter D. Smits, Mikael Fortelius &
Jukka Jernvall

Nature (2012) doi:10.1038/nature10880

The Cretaceous?Paleogene mass extinction approximately 66 million years ago is
conventionally thought to have been a turning point in mammalian evolution. Prior to that
event and for the first two-thirds of their evolutionary history, mammals were mostly
confined to roles as generalized, small-bodied, nocturnal insectivores, presumably under
selection pressures from dinosaurs. Release from these pressures, by extinction of
non-avian dinosaurs at the Cretaceous?Paleogene boundary, triggered ecological
diversification of mammals. Although recent individual fossil discoveries have shown that
some mammalian lineages diversified ecologically during the Mesozoic era5, comprehensive
ecological analyses of mammalian groups crossing the Cretaceous?Paleogene boundary are
lacking. Such analyses are needed because diversification analyses of living taxa allow
only indirect inferences of past ecosystems. Here we show that in arguably the most
evolutionarily successful clade of Mesozoic mammals, the Multituberculata, an adaptive
radiation began at least 20 million years before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs
and continued across the Cretaceous?Paleogene boundary. Disparity in dental complexity,
which relates to the range of diets, rose sharply in step with generic richness and
disparity in body size. Moreover, maximum dental complexity and body size demonstrate an
adaptive shift towards increased herbivory. This dietary expansion tracked the ecological
rise of angiosperms and suggests that the resources that were available to
multituberculates were relatively unaffected by the Cretaceous?Paleogene mass extinction.
Taken together, our results indicate that mammals were able to take advantage of new
ecological opportunities in the Mesozoic and that at least some of these opportunities
persisted through the Cretaceous?Paleogene mass extinction. Similar broad-scale
ecomorphological inventories of other radiations may help to constrain the possible