Hector Banos Cervantes

i) Phylogenetic networks

An important goal in evolutionary biology is to understand evolutionary relationships between species. Much recent research has focused on developing methods to infer these relationships from the types of data now available from molecular sequences. These include full-genome DNA sequences, sequences of many different genetic loci, and multi-locus gene trees. One of the main challenges in inferring these species relationships arises from the fact that many data sets involving different species exhibit gene tree incongruence:  some genes relate taxa differently. A possible reason for this is incomplete lineage sorting (ILS). One of my research interests is phylogenetic networks, which are a way to depict species relationships but allow hybridization between species in the presence of ILS.  

ii) Ancestral Phylogenies

The origin of the eukaryotic cell was one of the most important transitions in the evolutionary history of life. We now know that the last eukaryotic common ancestral (LECA) cell possessed most ‘modern’ eukaryotic features including a nucleus, a complex endomembrane system, mitosis, etc. One of my research interests is in assessing and developing models that accurately infer phylogenetic relationships between ancient organisms.