Next Generation Systematics

Peter D. Olson is a Researcher in the Department of Life Sciences at the Natural History Museum, London. His research integrates comparative, developmental and genomic studies of parasitic flatworms aimed at unravelling the genetic basis of their evolution. He became involved in the field of molecular phylogenetics when PCR and manual sequencing were being widely used to generate the first ribosomal-based estimates of animal phylogeny.

Joseph Hughes is an evolutionary biologist working at the Medical Research Council – at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. He is especially interested in understanding the evolutionary forces that have shaped the solutions that different species have found to adapt to their environment. He has embraced the deluge of data from high throughput sequencing platforms and currently mainly works on non-living particles known as viruses.

James A. Cotton is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Parasite Genomics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. His background is in phylogenetic theory and methods, and he now leads projects on comparative, evolutionary and population genomics of parasites of medical and veterinary importance.