The Robert May Prize is awarded annually for the best paper published in Methods by a young author at the start of their research career. We’re delighted to announce that the 2013 winner is Will Pearse, for his Application article “phyloGenerator: an automated phylogeny generation tool for ecologists”.
Although ecologists frequently want to make use of phylogenies, they often lack the skills to create detailed phylogenies of their study taxa. phyloGenerator greatly simplifies the process of creating a phylogeny, automating the download of DNA data and the use of modern phylogenetic software to produce a dated, defensible phylogeny. By linking together a number of existing tools into a single command-line interface and providing an extendable Python library, phyloGenerator is also a useful tool for phylogeneticists wishing to use an open, reproducible phylogenetic workflow. The Editors commented that, “this is an exciting idea that makes phylogenies almost immediately accessible to any researcher needing to use them. It is also a terrific example of the power of what we can achieve when data are made open and accessible.”
Will studied Zoology as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, then completed an MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, and later a PhD at Imperial College London supervised by Andy Purvis and David Roy (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford). His PhD focused on how the phylogeny of species in a community can be used to understand the ecological assembly of that community, and how phylogeny informs our understanding of communities undergoing change. Will is now a post-doc in Jeannine Cavender-Bares’ lab at the University of Minnesota, where he studies urban plant communities.
In addition to Will, the following young authors have been highly commended for their innovative articles:
– Emily Dennis from the University of Kent, for her co-authored paper Indexi
ng butterfly abundance whilst accounting for missing counts and variability in seasonal pattern.
– Joost Keuskamp and Bas Dingemans from Utrecht University, for their co-authored paper Tea Bag Index: a novel approach to collect uniform decomposition data across ecosystems. There is also an interview with the Tea Bag Index team to accompany this article.
The above 3 articles are included in a free virtual issue, along with all of the winning and highly commended articles from the other 4 British Ecological Society journals young investigator prizes.
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