CIPRES outreach Focus group leader: Brent D. Mishler Group members: M. Donoghue, D. Maddison, D. Swofford, T. Warnow, W. Wheeler CIPRES Outreach CIPRES outreach activities have focused on educating the public about the tree of life and phylogenetic analysis. We have developed several education modules introducing concepts such as phylogenetic trees, current knowledge of the tree of life, and the computational challenges surrounding its reconstruction. These materials are being presented nationally in workshops targeted at high school science educators, and are being made available on the web for free download. The Jepson Herbarium is presenting a series of workshops for the educated public on The Tree of Life. One-day workshops in this special series cover topics related to current techniques and recent developments in our understanding of the evolutionary tree of life. The plan is to develop a solid template for the workshops at Berkeley (tested mostly in the Bay Area), then to export these templates to our collaborating institutions back east and help their public programs people present similar workshops there. The events so far have been fully subscribed and were praised by the participants. Jepson Workshops presented: • Modern Techniques for Reconstructing the Tree of Life December 11, 2004 • Some Like it Hot: Diversity and Ecology in the Archaea (the Third Domain of Life) February 5, 2005 • What Happened to “Plants”? February 26, 2005 • Ferns and Flowering Plants: What We Thought vs. What We Know April 23, 2005 • Species Concepts February 25, 2006 • Tree Thinking for Educators March 11, 2006 • Hominid Evolution March 25, 2006 • Molecular Phylogenetic Techniques April 8, 2006 Educational Website development • The Cladisticules - Created originally by Tom Stidham at UCB, this exercise introduces students to the steps in a basic cladistic analysis, and such concepts as homology and homoplasy. • Getting to the Roots of Plant Evolution - Developed in conjunction with Staci Markos of the Jepson Herbarium, and the Green Tree of Life grant, this education module covers the major events in land plant evolution, genomic and morphological characters, and cladistic analysis. • Building the Tree of Life - This web education module builds on the basic concepts presented in the exercises above, and introduces the use of molecular data and computer-based analysis. Phylogenetic Analysis of the Cladisticules Data Matrix 1 head fused to thorax yes (0) no (1) 2 feet two toes (0) three toes (1) 3 number of legs four (0) six (1) 4 antennae absent (0) present (1) 5 horns absent (0) present (1) 6 thorax white (0) hour glass (1) 7 abdomen white (0) black (1) Joe (OG) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 April 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 Mike 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 Tanya 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 Bobby 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Jason 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 Jerry 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 Jane 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 Getting to the Roots of Plant Evolution: Genomics and the Reconstruction of the Tree of Life Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Deep Gene Research Coordination Group, CIPRES, and the Jepson Herbarium, UC Berkeley. Phylogenetic Analysis of the Green Plants Data Matrix-Solution 1. inv. repeat absent (0) present (1) 2. inv. gene position no (0) yes (1) 3. cuticle absent (0) present (1) 4. stomata absent (0) present (1) 5. xylem & phloem absent (0) present (1) 6. megaphyll absent (0) present (1) 7. sporophy te domin. no (0) yes (1) 8. seed absent (0) present (1) 9. flower absent (0) present (1) Green algae 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Liverworts 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Mosses 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 Lycophytes 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 Ferns 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 Gymnosperm s 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 Angiosperms 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 This web education module was created through the support of the Cyberinfrastructure for Phylogenetic Research project (CIPRES), an open collaboration funded by the National Science Foundation. In the previous exercise, you experienced building a cladogram from a data table. Now imagine that you wanted to construct a cladogram showing the evolutionary relationships of every organism that is alive today. Clearly, such a project is way too complex to complete by hand. As you learned before, all of life is related through evolution, and all of these evolutionary relationships can be represented by a branching (tree-shaped) diagram known as a cladogram. The cladogram for all living things is sometimes referred to as the “tree of life”. There are not many features of a bacterium, orchid, or frog that are appropriate for comparison. In this case, and in most real attempts at building a data table for the tree of life, the features that are compared exist at the molecular level, usually in the sequence of nucleotides that compose the DNA for a particular gene. New educational module developed by a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley, supported by CIPRES: Published at: http://www.phylo.org/sub_sections/outreach/outreach_module.html Cactus phylogeny exercise: spines Ferocactus sp. Cereus sp. areole areoles Phylogenetics of Early-Diverging Cactus Lineages by Ruth Kirkpatrick, Abby Moore, Bianca Knoll, Vicente Garcia, Andy Murdock, Michael Park, and Anna Larsen Inferior and recessed ovary QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. II. Now perform a cladistic analysis of the already filled in DNA sequence data matrix: Here is the entire length of the molecular sequence data generated from the original research of Edwards et al. (2004) and “pruned” of species not used in this lab. The original data matrix in its entirety is stored at TreeBASE (http://www.treebase.org/treebase/). QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. QuickTime™ and a TIFF (LZW) decompressor are needed to see this picture. Summary of Conclusions I: 1) Connecting with the familiar through legible labels, common names and pictures. 2) Simplification, with detail-on-demand - not all the data all the time, it's too much, but those who need it can retrieve it. 3) The ability to work at different scales of specificity, not just with the leaf nodes. So to be able to label and interact with larger groupings, such as "Birds" or "Green Plants" or "Lilies.“ 4) Avoid perpetuating notions that trees display progress by using radial layouts and/or interactivity that changes the order of things. 5) Support learning the conventions biologists use for branch lengths by actively labeling what convention is being used, and by showing the relationships between the different conventions for the same set of organisms Summary of Conclusions II: For outreach, teachers want... 1) Simple trees they can use to illustrate a biological concept, that are... 2) Labeled with common names, scientific names, and illustrations or photos (familiar) 3) To show alternative trees for the same group of organisms, in order to teach about the nature of science (how scientists do their work) 4) All of this wrapped up into a proven curriculum that has been developed in collaboration with professional educators and meets their state standards. LINKS TO AToL • There is no funding for general AToL outreach, so we have linked to the CIPRES outreach pages from the AToL website. • Many AToL grants have outreach components, and we will continue to use the AToL / CIPRES outreach pages to connect and leverage these efforts.