Report on the Ohio State University workshops in phylogenetic methods

A three-part series of workshops in phylogenetic methods was held at the Ohio State University in September and December 2005. The first two were sponsored by the OSU Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI), and focused on phylogeography and phylogenetic data, and phylogenetic analysis of large data sets respectively. These workshops highlighted theoretical and practical aspects of phylogeographic inferences using model-based approaches (e.g. likelihood and Bayesian MCMC), as well as current approaches to analyzing large datasets using both parsimony and model-based methods. The third workshop was sponsored by OSU systematics faculty, and was intended to provide practical training in current tools of phylogenetic analysis at the beginning and intermediate levels. The success of these workshops emphasizes the need for greater interaction between those involved in theoretical and empirical phylogenetic research. Further workshops, such as these, would serve to bring a practical understanding of these methods to as broad an audience as possible.