Ana Dal Molin
Major Professor: Dr. Jim Wooley
PhD. Candidate
"Evolutionary Biology in Chalcidoidea: what can the Tree of Life data tell us so far?"
When large data sets are involved in phylogenies, trivial issues may become central problems. Tree comparison and visualization are two of these issues addressed here. A data set for 18S and 28S 02 through 05 rONA covering 525 taxa, representing all 19 families of Chalcidoidea (Hymenoptera) (65 subfamilies and 267 genera) and five outgroup superfamilies (17 families and 51 genera), was produced and analyzed at the University of California, Riverside. Sets of trees were produced for MrBayes (1 tree), RaxML (5 trees with different settings for alignment and partitions) and TNT (two strict consensus sets with a minimum of 30,000 trees and a maximum of 150,000). The approach described here attempted to identify; 1) patterns of relationships below subfamily level across the obtained trees that cannot be identified based on the consensus and 2) groups that undermine the resolution of the consensus. We discuss briefly some of the patterns observed.