Lab News
Sep. 5, 2023
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The Revell lab has a new graduate student! After working as technician in the lab for two years, Viviana Romero Alarcon has officially started as a Ph.D. student in UMass-Boston's Integrative Biosciences program. |
Jul. 27, 2022
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Liam Revell's book with Dr. Luke Harmon (University of Idaho) on phylogenetic comparative methods in R has been published with Princeton University Press. The cover image is from Deadvlei fossil forest in Namibia. We chose it as a metaphor for using (phylogenetic) trees to look backwards in time and develop a better understanding of the (evolutionary) past. Check it out! |
Apr. 8, 2021
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Kevin Avilés-Rodríguez has successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Measuring the effects of urbanization and Hurricane Maria on the tropical lizard Anolis cristatellus: Morphometrics, ecology, and population genomics." Congratulations Dr. Avilés! |
Mar. 2, 2018
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Kristin Winchell has successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Evolutionary effects of urbanization on the tropical lizard genus Anolis." Congratulations Dr. Winchell! |
July 28, 2016
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Quynh Quach has successfully defended her M.Sc. thesis entitled "Historical allopatry and secondary contact or primary intergradation in the Puerto Rican crested anole, Anolis cristatellus, on Vieques Island." Congratulations Quynh! |
May 20, 2016
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Kristin Winchell's new paper has been featured on the journal cover! |
May 15, 2016
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Check out some of the press coverage (1, 2) of Kristin Winchell's new Evolution paper! |
Apr. 14, 2016
| Kristin Winchell's article on adaptation to urban areas in anoles is now out as an Accepted Article at Evolution. Congratulations to Kristin & her co-authors! |
Apr. 18, 2015
| Two postdocs in the Revell lab, Graham Reynolds and David Collar, will be starting faculty positions next year. Graham is starting as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at UNC-Asheville in January of 2016; while Dave starts as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Organismal & Environmental Biology at Christopher Newport University in Fall of 2015. Congratulations to both Graham & Dave! |
Mar. 16, 2015
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Kevin Aviles-Rodriguez will be coming to UMass in September 2015 as a Ph.D. student in the Revell lab. Kevin comes to us from Puerto Rico via the Kolbe lab at the University of Rhode Island. Welcome Kevin! |
Jan. 25, 2015
| Postdoctoral researcher David Collar has a new website. Check it out! |
Oct. 7, 2014
| Klaus Schliep has joined the Revell lab as a postdoc. Klaus did his Ph.D. at Massey University was a postdoc at the Universidade de Vigo. Klaus's research is in computational phylogenetics and he is the primary author of the popular R package, phangorn. |
Aug 12, 2014
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The Revell lab welcomes a new postdoctoral researcher: Dave Collar. Dave earned his Ph.D. at UC Davis and comes most recently from a postdoc it UCSC. For more information about Dave & his research, check out his website. |
Aug 12, 2014
| Revell lab graduate student Kristin Winchell just found out that she won a Gaige award to support her research from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH). Congratulations Kristin!. |
Mar 24, 2014
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The Revell lab has a new graduate student! Quynh Quach joined the lab this spring for her Masters after finishing her undergrad degree at Pacific Univ. in Oregon. |
Oct 30, 2013
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Liam's new article on ancestral character estimation of discretely valued traits under the threshold model is now available 'Accepted' from the journal Evolution. Check it out! |
July 16, 2013
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Kristin Winchell has won the SSAR student poster award at this year's Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists. For more information about Kristin's poster (and other posters highlighting research on Anolis), check out anole annals blog. To learn more about Kristin's research, head over to her website. Great job Kristin! |
July 16, 2013
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phytools has a new CRAN version. For more information, check out the phytools CRAN page or the phytools blog. |
Apr. 23, 2013
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Kristin Winchell just won a Nancy Goranson Endowment grant to fund her continued research on the evolutionary ecology of urbanization in Anolis cristatellus in Puerto Rico. Congratulations Kristin! |
Apr. 23, 2013
| Graham Reynolds has 3 (!!) new publications this month: in Genetica, Evolution, and Biol. Invasions. Congrats to Graham. |
Apr. 20, 2013
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There is a new version of phytools on CRAN (phytools 0.2-50). Check out the the phytools blog for a list of some of the new updates in this version. |
Mar. 21, 2013
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There is a new version of phytools on CRAN (phytools 0.2-30). To install, go to the phytools CRAN page. New features in this version include a method for visualizing uncertainty in a traitgram (example above). See the the phytools blog for a full summary. |
Feb. 28, 2013
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We just updated the Revell lab people page with photos and descriptions of new lab members (as well as updates for a couple more who have moved on). Please contact Liam for opportunities to get involved in the lab. |
Feb. 26, 2013
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Photos from both our trip last fall to Long Island in the Bahamas, and from this January's Tropical Biology in Puerto Rico field course are finally online on the Revell lab pictures page. |
Feb. 18, 2013
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phytools has a new CRAN version (phytools 0.2-20). Check out phytools CRAN page to intall. Also see the phytools blog for a list of updates in this version. |
Dec. 16, 2012
| Check it out! Graham and Alberto Puente-Rolón's article on the invasive boa constrictors of western Puerto Rico has received press coverage in several different outlets, including Discovery News and Live Science. See the following links for a few examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Congrats to Graham & Alberto. |
Nov. 29, 2012
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Graham & Alberto Puente-Rolón's article (with Liam & Bob Reed) on the genetics of invasive boa constrictors in western Puerto Rico just came out online in Biological Invasions. (Press release.) |
Nov. 20, 2012
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Liam's R phylogenetics blog (aka., the phytools blog) has a new URL: blog.phytools.org. Links to the old URL should work indefinitely. |
Nov. 19, 2012
| Graham's article on the genetics of invasive boa constrictors in Puerto Rico has just been accepted for publication by the journal Biological Invasions. |
Nov. 7, 2012
| Jill Newman has just published two different distribution notes in Herp Review, both courtesy of her recent internship in the Langkilde lab at Penn State. Congrats to Jill! |
Nov. 7, 2012
| phytools has a new CRAN version (v0.2-0) and new minor beta version (v0.2-04). Check out Liam's phytools blog for a description of all the new features of these phytools version. For the latest CRAN version of phytools, see the phytools CRAN page; the latest non-static minor release (still in testing) is here. |
Sep. 18, 2012
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Revell lab postdoc Graham Reynolds & collaborator Alberto Puente-Rolón recently received a grant from the US Fish & Wildlife Service to study the conservation genetics of the endangered Puerto Rican boa, Epicrates inornatus. |
Sep. 18, 2012
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Both Kristin & Graham have great new websites. Check out Kristin's new website; or Graham's. |
Apr. 10, 2012
| Lots of other news is also forthcoming, but please check out our new photo page. |
Jan. 15, 2012
| phytools has a new version (v0.1-6). See Liam's blog for a description of the new features of this version. The CRAN page for phytools is here. |
Dec. 29, 2011
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The Revell lab webpage now has a favicon. Check out your address bar. |
Dec. 16, 2011
| Liam's phytools manuscript is now available Online Early at MEE. Jill just learned that she will be starting an internship in the Langkilde lab at Penn State where she will be studying wood frog breeding, Cuban tree frogs, and fence lizards (in three separate studies). Congratulations to Jill! Graham has several articles in press or published, including an article recently accepted at Conservation Genetics. To find out more, check out Graham's publications page. |
Dec. 13, 2011
| Liam will be giving a participatory web seminar in collaboration with phangorn author Klaus Schliep at 2PM EST, Thursday Dec. 15, at phyloseminar.org. Note that if you are a first-timer in attending these seminars, it is wise to give yourself some time to log on to the EVO system! If you cannot attend, all seminars are also recorded. Thanks to Erick Matsen for putting together this series. |
Dec. 1, 2011
| Liam's article with Jason Kolbe and colleagues has just come out in Evolution. Also, phytools has a new CRAN version (v0.1-2). See phytools CRAN page, here. |
Nov. 18, 2011
| Liam has released a new version of the "phytools" package (v0.1-1). It can be downloaded from the phytools website, here (but not yet from CRAN). To find out about new features of this version of phytools, please see Liam's blog. |
Oct. 23, 2011
| Liam's paper with Graham Slater & colleagues on Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) for comparative biology is now online. Check it out here. |
Aug. 31, 2011
| New Ph.D student Kristin Winchell official started in the lab today. Kristin is interested in urban ecology of anoles. To find out more about Kristin, check out her website. |
Aug. 21, 2011
| "phytools" is now available through CRAN ("phytools" CRAN page can be seen here). Please check it out. |
Aug. 12, 2011
| Graham Reynolds joined the lab as a postdoc on the 1st of August. To find out more about Graham's research interests, please check out his website. |
Jul. 1, 2011
| Happy Canada Day. Please check out the latest "alpha" (that is, feature incomplete) version of my R phylogenetics package "phytools," which now has help packages and a PDF manual. Version 0.0-3 available here. More details on my blog. |
Jun. 7, 2011
| Please check the newly updated people page to see information about incoming postdoc Graham Reynolds and incoming Ph.D. student Kristin Winchell. |
Jun. 5, 2011
| Liam just released an alpha version of his "phytools: phylogenetic tools for comparative biology (and other things)" R package. Early reports suggest that it installs fine from source on a PC, but requires some cajoling to install on a Mac. Please check it out (here), and look for a slightly less alpha version soon. |
May 13, 2011
| Liam will be in the field with colleagues Jonathan Losos, Jason Kolbe, and others on Staniel Cay in the Bahamas from May 14-31. Read about Jonathan's 20 years of anole research in the Bahamas here. |
Apr. 13, 2011
| Kristin Winchell will be joining the lab this fall as my first Ph.D. student! She is interested in urban ecology and adaptation in reptiles. For more on Kristin's research, check out her website here. Contact me about opportunities for undergraduate, graduate, or postdoctoral research in my lab. |
Mar. 22, 2011
| I am hiring a postdoctoral researcher in my lab to start on or after Aug. 1, 2011. Please see the full job ad on UMass Boston's HR site here. Feel free to contact me with questions or for additional details about the position. |
Feb. 24, 2011
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I have now started at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Please check out my new phylogenetic comparative methods blog. |