Dr Simone Blomberg

Associate Professor in Statistics

School of the Environment
Faculty of Science
s.blomberg1@uq.edu.au
+61 7 336 52506

Overview

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 Biological Sciences

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.

Research Interests

  • 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.

Publications

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Supervision

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Available Projects

  • Current theory suggests that including fossils in macroevolutionary studies greatly improves the identifiability of models. However, it is not known how many fossils are necessary, where they should be placed in the tree (near the tips or near the root?), and how this interacts with tree shape and tree size. Also, are the fossils more important for ancestral character recosntruction, hypothesis testing, or model selection? This project will examine these factors in detail using simulations, with the possibility of examining case studies of taxa with good fossil records.

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Publications

Featured Publications

Book Chapter

  • Symonds, Matthew R. E. and Blomberg, Simon P. (2014). A primer on phylogenetic generalised least squares. Modern phylogenetic comparative methods and their application in evolutionary biology: concepts and practice. (pp. 105-130) edited by Laszlo Zsolt Garamszegi. Berlin Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-662-43550-2_5

  • Blomberg, Simon and Shine, Richard (2006). Reptiles. Ecological census techniques: a handbook. (pp. 297-307) edited by William J. Sutherland. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511790508.009

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Other Outputs

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

Completed Supervision

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

  • Current theory suggests that including fossils in macroevolutionary studies greatly improves the identifiability of models. However, it is not known how many fossils are necessary, where they should be placed in the tree (near the tips or near the root?), and how this interacts with tree shape and tree size. Also, are the fossils more important for ancestral character recosntruction, hypothesis testing, or model selection? This project will examine these factors in detail using simulations, with the possibility of examining case studies of taxa with good fossil records.