LiToL: Assembling the Liverwort Tree of Life

Personnel

Jonathan Shaw, Duke University
Shaw coordinates all aspects of the overall research program, and his lab has primary responsibility for the targeted gene sequencing. The project website is hosted at Duke with oversight by Shaw.  Shaw is also responsible for some of the outreach activities, including especially the adult and teacher education components. 
To Jon Shaw’s webpage
To Jon Shaw’s lab website

Christine Davis, Duke University
Davis is a postdoctoral researcher in the Shaw lab at Duke University.  She is primarily responsible for carrying out gene sequencing, editing, databasing, and data analysis for the project.  She co-designed, wrote much of, and maintains the project website, co-designed the project logo, composed the liverwort poster, and participates in developing materials for educational outreach.
To Christine Davis’s webpage

Blanka Shaw, Duke University
Shaw is the Herbarium Data Manager at the Duke University Cryptogamic Herbarium.  She assisted with production of the project website, and has provided many photographs for use.
To Blanka Shaw’s webpage

Barbara Crandall-Stotler and Ray Stotler, Southern Illinois University
Crandall-Stotler oversees the collection of developmental, anatomical, and morphological data, and compiles the morphological data matrices for phylogenetic analyses. She also collaborates with B. Mishler (University of California, Berkeley) on integration of information from fossils with the broader morphological analyses. R. Stotler will oversee, with collaboration of M. von Konrat and J. Engel (Field Museum), voucher specimen identification and documentation, including assembling voucher specimen photographs.
To the Stotlers’ website

Karen Renzaglia, Southern Illinois University
Renzaglia will oversee ultrastructural studies and assembly of the ultrastructural data matrix.  Renzaglia, who is also a PI on the ATOL project, "Deep Green Phylogenetics: novel analytical methods for scaling data from genomics to morphology,” will coordinate our work with this ATOL project. In collaboration with Wilson Taylor, she will integrate ultrastructural data from fossil spores into the morphological matrix. As Director of three federally funded programs for underserved and underrepresented students in STEM disciplines (US Department of Education, McNair Scholars Program; Bridge to the Doctorate, NSF, Louis StokesAlliance for Minority Participation; and NSF, UMEB Program to increase diversity at the BSA annual meeting), Renzaglia will also coordinate outreach activities to attract minorities to studies of plant biodiversity.
To Karen Renzaglia’s website

Bernard Goffinet, University of Connecticut
Goffinet will coordinate the plastid genome sequencing part of the project. He will consult with C. de Pamphilis (Pennsylvania State University) to obtain whole plastid genome sequences for two simple thalloid liverworts. He will also coordinate closely with Y. Qui, who is leading our mtDNA genome work. Annotation and analysis of the plastid data will be conducted in coordination with a team of workers currently focused on automating the process of whole genome analyses.
To Bernard Goffinet’s webpage

Yin-Long Qiu, University of Michigan
Qiu will coordinate the mitochondrial genome sequencing and mtDNA intron survey. This work will be integrated with his research to investigate mtDNA introns across the land plants. He is a co-PI on the angiosperm ATOL project, “Resolving the Trunk of the Angiosperm Tree and Twelve of its Thorniest Branches” and will facilitate coordination with it.
To Yin-Long Qiu’s webpage

John Engel and Matt von Konrat, Chicago Field Museum
Engel and von Konrat, along with R. Stotler (SIU), will coordinate the acquisition of plant materials for the research and oversee voucher determinations. Von Konrat will be in charge of incorporating voucher information into the Field Museum collections database and integrating complementary data (e.g., molecular accession numbers, photographic documentation of morphology) with those specimen records. Von Konrat will also work closely with Shaw to develop teaching modules and web presentations for our outreach efforts. He will oversee development of the interactive keys to liverwort genera and integrate our efforts with the Discover Life project (http://www.discoverlife.org/).  Von Konrat was instrumental in composing the Liverwort Ecology and Conservation, Biochemistry, Oil bodies, and Resources for Research and Education portions of this website.
To John Engel’s webpage
To Matt von Konrat’s webpage

Nico Cellinese and Read Beaman, Yale University
Cellinese and Beaman oversee the major bioinformatics effort of the project.  They developed the Tree of Life Knowledge and Information Network (TOLKIN) to house and catalog accession information, genetic data, and morphological data.  They will ensure complete integration of our bioinformatics program with the ATOL project, “Resolving the Trunk of the Angiosperm Tree and Twelve of its Thorniest Branches,” for which they serve as co-PIs. 
To Nico Cellinese’s webpage

Collaborators

David Long, Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh
In collaboration with Michelle Hollingsworth in the Molecular Laboratories, Long has taken primary responsibility in LiToL for research on the complex thalloid group.
To the bryology page at RBGE

Laura Forrest, Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh
Forrest was the lead author on the liverwort phylogeny paper presented at the International Botanical Congress in 2005, and constructed the figures shown on the phylogeny pages throughout the website. Forrest was a postdoctoral associate in the Stotler lab at the time of that paper's presentation, and currently works with David Long, contributing to the complex thalloid work.

In addition to the PIs, collaborators at other U.S. and non-U.S. institutions provide important components of the research plan. Our approach will be generally inclusive and any researcher with an interest in liverwort phylogenetics will be encouraged to participate.  Other key collaborators include (but are not limited to):S. Bartholomew-Began (sporeling ontogeny and axenic culturing, University of Pennsylvania at West Chester); C. de Pamphilis (molecular evolution, Pennsylvania State University); J. Duckett (ultrastructure and fungal symbioses, University of London); D. Glenny (liverwort floristics, New Zealand, Landcare Research, Lincoln); B. Mishler (green plant phylogeny; UC Berkeley); J. Pickering (computational biology, University of Georgia); P. Wolf (organellar genomics; Utah State University).

Contributors

Li Zhang (former postdoctoral associate in the Stotler lab) took many of the photographs seen throughout the website.

John Braggins (New Zealand, the Auckland War Memorial Museum) provided many photographs for the website.

Ping Zhou and Gisela Olivan (Duke University, Shaw lab) contributed the Chinese and Spanish translations of the liverwort poster, respectively.

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