The Tree of Life

About

Pablo Vargas is Scientific Researcher of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) at the Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid Spain. He earned his Ph.D. at the Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid and completed a four-year postdoctoral period in California (UC Berkeley) England (University of Reading) and Germany (University of Mainz). The postdoctoral period and current researcher position allowed specialization in plant phylogenetics. As a result he has published over 100 scientific papers including tree reconstructions of more than 20 angiosperm families in the last 15 years. In addition four more books on public dissemination of plant sciences were also published in this period. Currently three main projects address hypotheses on systematics of Mediterranean angiosperm families phylogenomics of the olive tree and relatives and ecological processes in plants and animals of the Galapagos Islands.Rafael Zardoya is Research Professor of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid Spain. He earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University Complutense of Madrid and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (with Axel Meyer). His current research interests include: the study of higher phylogenetic relationships of several metazoan phyla with particular emphasis on mollusks and vertebrates; the genetic basis of speciation in marine snails and their phylogeography; the molecular evolution of complete animal mitochondrial genomes and nuclear gene families; and the performance and limitations of phylogenetic methods in a genomic context.