The 2021 Mathematical, Inferential, and Computational Phylogenomics (MIC-Phy) meeting was great. Lots of great posters, talks and workshops. I was only bummed about the talks I missed due to the difference in time zones. But, luckily, most of the talks are now up online, so I’m eager to catch up on what I missed.
I presented some new work by JR and I, where we generalized the space of trees explored during Bayesian phylogenetic inference in order to infer shared and multifurcating divergences. Based on simulations, the new approach can accurately infer such branching patterns from genomic data. Equally important, it does not spuriously support such patterns when divergences are independent and bifurcating. Using this approach, we found evidence for the signature of interglacial rises in sea levels fragmenting the Philippine Islands in the phylogenies of two genera of geckos.
You can find our slides here and the video below.