Species in the Age of Discordance (Utah, USA)

Biological lineages move through time, space, and each other. As they do, they diversify, diverge, and grade away from and into one another. One result of this is genealogical discordance, i.e., the lineages of a biological entity may have different histories. We see this on many levels, from microbial networks, to holobionts, to population-level lineages.

The focus of this project is whether and how this and other sorts of biological discordance impacts our views on species. To promote a cross-disciplinary examination of this question, investigators from a variety of fields will participate in a series of interdisciplinary meetings. This includes researchers working on phylogenetics, microbiology, symbiosis, population genetics, taxonomy, philosophy, and history.

The Utah meeting is the first of three meetings on this topic. Follow up sessions are tentatively planned for the 2017 Evolution Meeting (Portland, OR) and the 2017 ISHPSSB Meeting (Sao Paulo, Brazil). The Utah meeting will be a mix of invited and refereed papers and posters.