Syllabus for Fundamental and Molecular Systematics

Learning outcomes

On completion of the course, the student should be able to

• discuss and apply principles of delimitation and identification of species and other taxa
• account for the central concepts of the field and principles of phylogenetic analysis, especially based on the parsimony criterion
• discuss and apply methods to generate relevant molecular data, mainly sequence data
• choose and apply existing software for phylogenetic analysis and critically analyse, evaluate, compile and present the results of phylogenetic analyses.

Content

The course deals with central concepts of general and molecular systematics, technologies for collection of molecular data and basic methods for phylogenetic analysis. Systematic issues and methods to address these; phylogenetic trees, the homology concept, classification. Phylogenetics; characters and character coding, sequence alignment, the parsimony criterion and other optimality criteria, tree search, sampling error and support, practical phylogenetic analysis. Delimitation and identification of taxa; species concepts, criteria and methods to delimit species in practice, identification of species with DNA sequences. Molecular data; types of molecular data for phylogenetic analysis and identification, extraction, amplification and sequencing of DNA.

Instruction

The course consists of lectures, seminars and laboratory sessions.

Assessment

Parts of the course: Theory 5 credits; Laboratory sessions 5 credits

The theory part is examined through written examination, written report, and seminars. The laboratory part has compulsory

attendance with oral and written presentations.