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Spatial Phylogenetics - combining molecular phylogenetics with collection-based data to interpret evolutionary and ecological history, as well as better inform conservation decisions.

We are now at a point where well-sampled phylogenies of the plants or animals that occur in large areas can be created simply by using publicly available sequence information.

We can also now make distribution maps of these organisms by using the wealth of geocoded collection information that is stored online at places such as Australia’s Virtual Herbarium, or GBIF.

"Spatial phylogenetics" is the combination of big phylogenetic data and even bigger collection data sets. New phylogenetic tools have been developed that combine these data sets to explore patterns of diversity and endemism in a much deeper manner than species counts alone.

Another advantage of using these tools is that they are rank-free and can be applied at any level in both phylogenies and geography.

This talk will explain these metrics, how they can be applied both singularly and in concert by using examples from a recently published study on Australia’s angiosperms, and other projects that are underway on California and other parts of the world.

Andrew Thornhill is a former EEG PhD student, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley. His current research is the California Plant Phylodiversity Project which has created a phylogeny of the entire Californian vascular flora and combined it with the spatial information from over 1.3 million herbarium records. Before moving to America, Andrew was a postdoc at the Australian Tropical Herbarium in Cairns and the Australian National Herbarium at CSIRO in Canberra.