Transmitting Science and ForBio are co-organizing a course on "Quantitative cladistics and use of TNT".
This course will cover the basics of parsimony analysis and character optimisation, tree-searches, diagnosing and summarising results efficiently, and measuring group supports. It will be informal, with extensive hands-on exercises which will help students get familiar with the main aspects of phylogenetic analysis using TNT. For each of the units in the course, there will be a lecture (one to two hours, depending on the topics), then switching to exercises illustrating the points just seen in the lecture. Switches between “lecture” and “hands-on” mode will be dynamic, depending on how students progress with the exercises.
This course will make extensive use of TNT. There will also be a demonstration and some practice with GB->TNT, a program to create TNT matrices from GenBank data (in turn, GB->TNT requires installation of an alignment program, ideally Mafft or Muscle and possibly BioEdit to inspect alignments).
Teachers: Pablo A. Goloboff and Claudia A. Szumik Fundación Miguel Lillo – CONICET, Argentina
Number of participants: Places are limited to 18 participants and will be occupied by strict registration order.
Requirements: Graduate or postgraduate degree in any Biosciences discipline (including palaeontologists no matter the degree), basic knowledge of statistics, cladistics and personal computers. All participants must bring their own personal laptop, Windows strongly recommended (the software works with Macintosh, though without a graphic interface).
Cetificate and credits: This course is equivalent to 3 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) at the Life Science Zurich Graduate School and ForBio and participants who have completed the course and pass an assignment will receive a certificate at the end of it.
Click here for more information about the course.
For those interested in registering in this course, please do so through the Transmitting Science website.
ForBio will cover the registration fee for all accepted ForBio members. ForBio associates can get a 20% discount on the course fee. ForBio will cover travel and accommodation only for Norwegian ForBio members. A 30% of the course fee may be required as a confirmation of assistance for all participants, amount that will be reimbursed to ForBio members during the course.
Contact Maria Capa for more information.