Corse coordinator: Joana Zanol
Time and place: November 30 – December 04, 2026, Alto da Figueira Field Station, Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Scope
Phylogenetic methods are essential to understand evolutionary relationships among organisms and molecules, and provide the means to study the evolution of biological traits and the estimation of divergence times and their relationship with relevant evolutionary events. These methods depend on hypotheses of homology that may be based on morphological or molecular data.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course students should be able to reconstruct strong phylogenetic hypotheses for their research by:
- Interpreting evolutionary trees and networks
- Choosing the kind of data (individual molecular markers, genomic data) and taxa (tree rooting) that will be informative to answer their research question
- Understanding molecular homology at different levels including orthology and paralogy concepts
- Data mining, running alignment softwares and evaluating the quality of alignments by looking at the hypotheses of homology and saturation and using translation from nucleotide to aminoacids for protein coding genes
- Finding the best fit nucleotide and protein evolutionary models
- Concatenating data from different molecular markers
- Generating maximum likelihood trees with bootstrap branch support
- Running Bayesian methods to generate phylogenetic trees and calculating the posterior probability of different parameters; consensus
- Understanding species tree
- Interpreting and resolving analytical artifacts, such as long-branch attraction and rogue taxa
- Calibration, molecular clock and dating of tree nodes
- Comparative methods (e.g. ancestral state reconstruction)
Provided skills:
Students will receive theoretical and practical training on how to perform informative phylogenetic analyses based on molecular data. Training includes selection of terminal taxa and data, running analyses and tree based inferences.
Required skills:
Basic knowledge in biodiversity science with at least a bachelor’s degree in biology. Some experience with work on molecular data and the use of molecular systematics software is an advantage. Students are expected to read a selection of scientific review papers in advance.
Teachers:
Daniela Takiya – Professor, Biology Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Dimitar Dimitrov – Professor, University Museum of Bergen, University of Bergen, Norway
Fabricius Domingos – Professor, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
Joana Zanol – Professor, National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sonia Andrade – Professor, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Ricardo Alvarez – Postdoc, University of Campinas, Brazil
Student quota: Maximum 20 students (12 students from Brazil, 5 students from Norway, 3 students from South Africa).
If there are more applicants within each quota than spots, participants will be selected based on the scientific, educational and/or professional merit, motivation and relevance of the course for their career development. MARLIN is committed to providing equal opportunities for all students independently of their ethnic and socio-economic status.
Eligibility
Norway and South Africa: Only PhD and Master level students associated with MARLIN project partners (UiB, NTNU, UiT, SU, SANBI, CPUT) are eligible for course registration.
Brazil: Students and non-student participants from any University/Research Institute can apply, but priority and financial support will be given to PhD and Master students from UFRJ, USP, and UFPR.
Results of the selection process will be announced via e-mail shortly after the application deadline.
Working language: English
Assignment and credits: The course is equivalent to 3 ECTS.
Registration: Please fill in the online application form here.
Application deadline:
Applicants from Norway and South Africa: August 3rd, 2026
Applicants from Brazil: application is open for all students but the deadline is currently negotiated with UFRJ administration and will be announced by the end of April 2026.
Financial support: There is no course fee. Course participants enrolled in a Master or a PhD study program and affiliated with one of the MARLIN project partners (UiB, NTNU, UiT, UFRJ, USP, UFPR, SU, SANBI, CPUT) are eligible for financial support, including travel, visa costs, insurance (for student outside Brazil), local transport to the venue, accommodation, meals.
About the venue:
Alto da Figueira Field Station is located about 2.5 h by car from Rio de Janeiro’s international airport and is the headquarters of ARAÇÁ (Atlantic forest Research And Conservation Alliance).
Alto da Figueira is a private nature reserve owned and managed by Alexandre and Anna Antonelli since early 2022. The reserve has around 120 ha of pristine Atlantic Rainforest, with many different types of forests, mountains, valleys, streams and one of the most biodiverse environments on our planet.
Contact:
Joana Zanol (joanazanol@mn.ufrj.br) – for more information about the course and local logistics
Nataliya Budaeva (nataliya.budaeva@uib.no) and/or
Luis Martell (luis.martell@uib.no) – regarding financial support through the MARLIN project and travel arrangements