SUPERSMART: Self Updating Platform for Estimating Rates of Speciation and Migration, Ages and Relationships of Taxa

Understanding the historical assembly of biomes and the response of biodiversity to past episodes of climate change may help us prioritize clades and regions for conservation. Vast amounts of biological data are being deposited at public databases, holding the potential for powerful assessments of large-scale evolutionary processes. Yet, there have been surprisingly few attempts to merge and synthesize data within and among databases, and apply them in macro-evolutionary and biogeographic research.

In this talk I will present SUPERSMART, which aims at merging data from major biological databases and providing users with a flexible, open-source platform for a wide range of evolutionary and biogeographical questions and analyses. In particular, we are linking DNA sequences, species distribution data, fossil records, and climatic variables. For these purposes we are 1) further developing the PhyLoTa browser in order to produce genus-level, fossil calibrated mega-chronograms for plants, animals and fungi; 2) from these trees, producing hundreds of species-level, multi-gene datasets of directly comparable crown ages; 3) applying a newly developed Bayesian meta-analysis approach to estimate rates of speciation, extinction, and migration within and among user-defined operational areas; and 4) testing for correlations between diversification, migration, and environmental niche evolution. The bioinformatics pipeline developed for this purpose is distinctly modular and can easily be modified and extended as new methods and software become available. There are several interactions between SUPERSMART and other on-going initiatives in North America and Europe. I will provide some highly relevant empirical examples of the use of this platform in biogeographic research.

Keywords: Historical biogeography, species diversification, biome evolution, bioinformatic tools, dated tree of life.