Simone Blomberg

Methods and applications of statistics in evolutionary biology and population ecology. My research involves the application and development of statistical methods in ecology, evolutionary biology, and general whole-organism biology. My two particular research foci are phylogenetic comparative methods and other uses of statistics in ecology, evolution, and systematics. I also have a strong interest in the application of Bayesian methods, and the statistical philosophy of the nature of evidence in whole-organism biology. How and why do scientists agree that certain data are evidence for or against a particular hypothesis? I also provide a statistical consultation service for staff and students within the School of the Environment. I am interested in taking graduate students at any level who are interested in quantitative methods in biology. Students in my lab will be able to (or be willing to learn) program computers in S (http://www.r-project.org), a compiled language such as C or Fortran, and/or a scripting language such as Python or Scheme in a Unix environment. Students are also encouraged to extend or develop their mathematical skills. A background in biology, statistics, mathematics, or computer science would be valuable. I can also co-supervise students who are interested in using quantitative methods for their thesis work, but for whom such methods are not a primary focus of research. Models of Quantitative Trait Evolution: Macroevolution lacks mathematical theory. I am trying to develop new models of evolution and apply them to real data sets in order to bring the study of macroevolution into the 21st century. I concentrate on the use of diffusion processes as evolutionary models. Diffusions are a broad class of processes that have applications in finance, physics, and other quantitative disciplines. Their use in evolutionary studies has been at a fairly basic level, mainly using Brownian motion and the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. These two processes are simple but are not very realistic descriptions of how evolution occurs. I aim to provide more, better models together with methods to fit them to real data.

[2026] Quality Assurance Framework for the Design, Collection and Curation of Standard Data Products From a Distributed Ecology Network [2026] From dive slates to digital imagery: an evaluation of the effect of coral reef assessment methods on benthic and substrate compositions and an alignment between methods [2026] The breakdown of functional uniformity at fine spatial scales in an intertidal seagrass macrobenthic community [2025] Multivariate trait evolution: models for the evolution of the quantitative genetic G-matrix on phylogenies [2025] Several candidate size metrics explain vital rates across multiple populations throughout a widespread species' range [2025] Using a null hypothesis framework to test expectations of disparity in an adaptive radiation [2025] Artificial light influen