SUPERSMART: Self Updating Platform for Estimating Rates of Speciation and Migration, Ages and Relationships of Taxa

Vast amounts of biological data are being deposited at public databases, holding the potential for powerful assessments of large-scale evolutionary processes. Yet, there have been surprisingly few attempts to merge and synthesize data within and among databases, and apply them in macro-evolutionary and biogeographic research.

In this talk I will present SUPERSMART, which aims at merging data from major biological databases and providing users with a flexible, open-source platform for a wide range of evolutionary and biogeographical questions and analyses. In particular, we are linking DNA sequences, species distribution data, fossil records, and climatic variables. For these purposes we are 1) further developing the PhyLoTa browser in order to produce genus-level, fossil calibrated mega-chronograms for plants, animals and fungi; 2) from these trees, producing hundreds of species-level, multi-gene datasets of directly comparable crown ages; 3) applying a newly developed Bayesian meta-analysis approach to estimate rates of speciation, extinction, and migration within and among user-defined operational areas; and 4) testing for correlations between diversification, migration, and environmental niche evolution.