Welcome to the Phyletica Lab, which is setting up shop next fall in the Department of Biological Sciences and Musuem of Natural History at Auburn University. My name is Jamie Oaks, and I start as an Assistant Professor at Auburn in August 2016. Currently, I am an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with Adam Leaché and Vladimir Minin at the University of Washington.
The Phyletica Lab is broadly interested in understanding how and why there are so many species on our planet. To approach this question, we explore patterns of variation within and among populations of organisms to infer evolutionary history and test models of diversification. This entails developing phylogenetic models, implementing them as computational methods, and ultimately applying these methods to molecular data collected from natural populations. The focus of our empirical work is reptiles and amphibians, however, we also work with systems ranging from viruses to plants.
On this site, you can find more information about our ongoing research, teaching, and software development, as well as read our blog where we post along the way. Thanks for visiting.
Recent Posts
Visiting Provo
Enjoying an early Spring in Provo.
Converting PDF slides to animated GIFs and videos with ImageMagick
The power and flexiblity of Imagemagick command-line tools is ... magickal.
The Dirichlet process for dummies (i.e., biologists, like me)
An accessible introduction to how the Dirichlet process works and why it's useful.
Teaching-assessment survey for phylogenetics
A learning-assessment survey for an Applied Phylogenetics course.
Avoiding Type 3 fonts in matplotlib plots
Controlling fonts in matplotlib plots.