Gustavo A. Ballen

Include fossils in your phylogenies whenever possible!

tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in Bayesian evolutionary analyses Abstract. Estimating phylogenies in which branch lengths are expressed in units of absolute time is crucial for testing hypotheses in evolutionary biology.

RRrrrr, a scientist's best friend. A new package "tbea" has made estimating phylogenies even easier than before, crucial for testing hypotheses in evolutionary biology! Combining fossil, genetic & geological data, this study looked at S American Cynodontidea as an example 👇

Benchmarking of software for Bayesian sampling of divergence times using genomes

We have a new Bayesian sampler of divergence times that is smoking fast! Benchmarking by the exceptional @lauramulvey.bsky.social

I'm happy to share our latest (and wrap-up) paper from the Genome of Melody project in this special collection on cultural evolution royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

This earlier thread sounds relevant here bsky.app/profile/gaba...

Hello, I'm interested!

Gustavo A. Ballen - Palaeoichthyology and Neogene Palaeogeography of Northern South America YouTube video by Pal(a)eoPERCS

Thank you to @palaeopercs.bsky.social for inviting me, the talk is already available on YouTube: youtu.be/k-yWOsyF0Jw

Looking forward to giving this talk. See you all on Tuesday!

Congratulations Etka!

El Zoominario: How do we tell the time of macroevolution? -- Gustavo Ballen YouTube video by SolisLemus-lab

This outreach talk from last year just came out. Huge thanks to Claudia Solis-Lemus for inviting me to El Zoominario. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qdL...

@rodrigoichthys.bsky.social

eu quero SITES das coisas, com contato via e-mail e telefone, especialmente lojas, serviços etc e não perfil de Instagram com preço inbox

also quero tutoriais e análises em escrito, que eu possa dar um control f, não em video que tu fica caçando o trecho de 5 segundos que te interessa

tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in bayesian evolutionary analyses Abstract. Estimating phylogenies in which branch lengths are expressed in units of absolute time is crucial for testing hypotheses in evolutionary biology.

Our paper (with @sreinales.bsky.social) finally out today in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society. It feels like a birthday present 🤪 academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...

It's not possible to use continuous in MrBayes at the moment despite the confusing information regarding this over the internet (been there some years ago). That's work in progress by Chi Zhang, so eventually it will be available.

Our latest paper on Farlowella from Colombia in Journal of Fish Biology, the result of the undergrad dissertation by my former student Omar Melo. Supported by @agenciafapesp.bsky.social Universidad Javeriana, Museu de Zoologia da USP, and UNESP Botucatu. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Phylogenetic networks empower biodiversity research | PNAS Reticulate evolution has long been recognized as a key mechanism that contributes to genetic and trait diversity. With the widespread availability ...

Phylogenetic networks empower biodiversity research | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Colombian palaeontology

Multifaceted evolution of dental morphology during the diversification of the bat superfamily Noctilionoidea https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.10.658888v1

The tragic landslide in Blatten gives me the excuse to tell you the story of how we found out Ice Ages existed. It's a cool story and the most important bit is rather similar to what's happening now.

Fascinating thread! Thank you!

💯

Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

Bayesian Selection of Relaxed-Clock Models: Distinguishing between Independent and Autocorrelated Rates Abstract. In Bayesian molecular-clock dating of species divergences, rate models are used to construct the prior on the molecular evolutionary rates for br

Happy to share that my PhD paper published in Systematic Biology. My paper explores the #Asymptotictheory of Bayesian rate model selection and explore how misspecified calibrations can affect this. Also test rate model selection with large #Phylogenomes

Link below:
academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

Ammonite art by the brilliant @jwmorenob.bsky.social who is always happy to take commissions!

I'm happy to see my latest preprint out on stratigraphic intervals, a topic I've been interested in since my first year as PhD student. Available in the brand-new StratIntervals.jl (github.com/gaballench/S...) @julialang.org package. Preprint on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A flexible Bayesian method for estimating stratigraphic intervals and their co-occurrence in time https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.13.638199v1

Fantastic analogy!

🙋🏽‍♂️

First time in four years that I don't ☺️