The sources of historical signal in the genomes of birds
Genome-scale sequence data play an important role across the biological, medical, and agricultural sciences for extracting the signatures of divergence among species and populations. Multiple basic biological forces influence the evolutionary information content of genomes, leading to substantial variation across genomic loci and lineages. Models of molecular evolution for phylogenomics are routinely used for extracting information about evolutionary history, and ultimately for making inferences of the relationships and amount of evolutionary change among taxa. However, existing phylogenomic methods are not amenable for identifying the impact of specific drivers of historical information across whole genomes. The present action will develop tests in the framework of model adequacy for assessing the impact of the primary evolutionary forces on the genome. Assessment of model adequacy proceeds by comparing simulated data under a given evolutionary model with empirical data. The novel framework will be tailored at whole-genome analysis. It will allow a comprehensive examination of the sources information signal left by basic evolutionary forces, such as speciation, mutation, selection, recombination, and drift. The new methods will be disseminated through an intuitive software package that will be openly available for researchers across biological sciences. Examining the sources of evolutionary information will allow improved phylogenetic inferences and guide model improvement. An unparalleled genomic resource of the genomes of every avian family, soon to be released by the host, will be examined in detail with the methods developed. This will provide insights into genome evolution in birds and inferences of their evolutionary history with unprecedented confidence.