Marcela Reyna, Javier Villarreal

Phylogenetic Tree Creation Methods

A chronological look at the development of our senior project and my inability at
properly titling things

Preliminary Details
Early in our research, Professor Andres Figueroa provided us with the .nex file
(Neurological Data for Statistical Analysis) on the Morning Glory specimen used
in Professor Andrew McDonald’s own research endeavors. We were given
reference manuals and instructions on how to install and utilize PAUP and similar
applications in order to analyze the data set and also to better acquaint ourselves
with the material.

We were then given copies of Professor McDonald’s scientific document,

"Evolutionary History of Autogamy in North American Ipomoea" in order to better
understand the biological question behind our research.

Research Begins
After reading the documentation on PAUP, we began using the program in
earnest with McDonald’s data set, more tinkering than anything else, learning
along the way. At this stage, we still didn’t have a clear picture of what exactly we
would be doing for our project, instead opting to learn more about a subject that
we found interesting but still outside of our usual realm.

We then set up a meeting with McDonald to discuss his research and how we
can utilize his developments for our own. Already working with another professor
from Duke who specializes in systematic analysis, McDonald explained his
research on the Morning Glories of North American. His research aims to prove
that autogamy reproduction in the different Morning Glory species are a short
term evolutionary tactic for unstable environments – an long term evolutionary
dead-end in short. Unfortunately, he has hit a bit of a snag in his research as the
phylogenetic results have shown that the opposite is true. He contests that his
initial data set is incomplete, his sample of the different xenogamic species being
too small.

Research Continues – CSSRD Developments

We have recently agreed to present our findings during the annual CSSRD this
month. While our efforts up to this point have been a bit sparse we hope to have
something worthy of presenting by the end of this week (4/16 – 4/20).