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Gustavo A. Ballen

@gaballench.bsky.social
730 followers 244 following 63 posts

Computational biologist 🖥️. (Palaeo)Ichthyologist 🐟🦴. Lutenist 🎶. FAPESP postdoctoral fellow at UNESP Botucatu. gaballench.com

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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Assessing the robustness of SNaQ to violations induced by high-level phylogenetic networks www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
I have received the Excellence Prize in evolutionary biology in the @sbbe.bsky.social Conference for the second time in the field of Methods and Software. I am most grateful to my coauthors and especially to @sreinales.bsky.social for all her support in this academic and personal journey.
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
The Palaeontological Association @thepalass.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Fossil freshwater fishes from the Pliocene of northern Colombia & the palaeogeography of northern South America onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @gaballench.bsky.social @sreinales.bsky.social @agenciafapesp.bsky.social #PapersinPalaeontology #FossilFriday
Top left: Map centred on Colombia, showing Venezuela to the right and the Pacific Ocean to the left. The Guajira Peninsula is highlighted in a dotted box outline towards the top. To the right is a photograph of a fossil fish tooth (Serrasalmus; STRI 470060; scale bar 2 mm). Red rectangle in the top right corner is a cover image from the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Bottom left is a palaeogeographic map of northern South America showing a possible palaeodrainage connection between east and west of the Andes. In the bottom left corner is a selection of fish photographs representing the taxa recovered from the site.
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Alexis Stamatakis @stamatak.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Applications for the 2027 summer school on Computational Molecular Evolution on Crete are now open at: meetings.embo.org/event/27-com...
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
And finally it was published! Massive thanks to my coauthors, the editor and reviewers, and the institutions that supported our research. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
journals.plos.org
What did the dove sing to Pope Gregory? Ancestral melody reconstruction in Gregorian chant using Bayesian phylogenetics
An attractive goal in the study of Gregorian chant melodies is reconstructing unobserved melodies as they may have been transmitted along their history, especially as early chant notation does not cap...
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Henry Arenas-Castro @henryarenas.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
VIII Simposio Colombiano de Biología Evolutiva Bogotá, 23-25 de julio Inscripciones abiertas 📣 Diversidad de invitados, cursos precongreso y simposios temáticos: Biogeografía, filogenética, EvoDevo, morfometría, enseñanza de la evolución y mucho más... Más info: lasalle.edu.co/es/viii-simp...
Póster anunciando que las inscripciones para el VIII Simposio Colombiano de Biología Evolutiva están abiertas. Inscripción temprana hasta el 24 de abril.
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Include fossils in your phylogenies whenever possible!
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society @evojlinnsoc.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
RRrrrr, a scientist's best friend. A new package "tbea" has made estimating phylogenies even easier than before, crucial for testing hypotheses in evolutionary biology! Combining fossil, genetic & geological data, this study looked at S American Cynodontidea as an example 👇
doi.org
tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in Bayesian evolutionary analyses
Abstract. Estimating phylogenies in which branch lengths are expressed in units of absolute time is crucial for testing hypotheses in evolutionary biology.
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
I'm happy to share our latest (and wrap-up) paper from the Genome of Melody project in this special collection on cultural evolution royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Thank you to @palaeopercs.bsky.social for inviting me, the talk is already available on YouTube: youtu.be/k-yWOsyF0Jw
youtu.be
Gustavo A. Ballen - Palaeoichthyology and Neogene Palaeogeography of Northern South America
YouTube video by Pal(a)eoPERCS
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
Looking forward to giving this talk. See you all on Tuesday!
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 17/10/2025
This outreach talk from last year just came out. Huge thanks to Claudia Solis-Lemus for inviting me to El Zoominario. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qdL...
youtube.com
El Zoominario: How do we tell the time of macroevolution? -- Gustavo Ballen
YouTube video by SolisLemus-lab
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
savin dos louvadeus 🦗 @sav.trevastropicais.art.br · 20/09/2025
eu quero SITES das coisas, com contato via e-mail e telefone, especialmente lojas, serviços etc e não perfil de Instagram com preço inbox also quero tutoriais e análises em escrito, que eu possa dar um control f, não em video que tu fica caçando o trecho de 5 segundos que te interessa
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Our paper (with @sreinales.bsky.social) finally out today in the Evolutionary Journal of the Linnean Society. It feels like a birthday present 🤪 academic.oup.com/evolinnean/a...
academic.oup.com
tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in bayesian evolutionary analyses
Abstract. Estimating phylogenies in which branch lengths are expressed in units of absolute time is crucial for testing hypotheses in evolutionary biology.
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Our latest paper on Farlowella from Colombia in Journal of Fish Biology, the result of the undergrad dissertation by my former student Omar Melo. Supported by @agenciafapesp.bsky.social Universidad Javeriana, Museu de Zoologia da USP, and UNESP Botucatu. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Sungsik Kong @sungsik.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
Phylogenetic networks empower biodiversity research | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Phylogenetic networks empower biodiversity research | PNAS
Reticulate evolution has long been recognized as a key mechanism that contributes to genetic and trait diversity. With the widespread availability ...
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Colombian palaeontology
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
Multifaceted evolution of dental morphology during the diversification of the bat superfamily Noctilionoidea www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Andrea Matranga @andreamatranga.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
The tragic landslide in Blatten gives me the excuse to tell you the story of how we found out Ice Ages existed. It's a cool story and the most important bit is rather similar to what's happening now.
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
💯
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 07/05/2025
“Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate…Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”
nymag.com
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College
ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Muthukumaran Panchaksaram, PhD @muthubioinfo.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Happy to share that my PhD paper published in Systematic Biology. My paper explores the #Asymptotictheory of Bayesian rate model selection and explore how misspecified calibrations can affect this. Also test rate model selection with large #Phylogenomes Link below: academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...
academic.oup.com
Bayesian Selection of Relaxed-Clock Models: Distinguishing between Independent and Autocorrelated Rates
Abstract. In Bayesian molecular-clock dating of species divergences, rate models are used to construct the prior on the molecular evolutionary rates for br
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
I'm happy to see my latest preprint out on stratigraphic intervals, a topic I've been interested in since my first year as PhD student. Available in the brand-new StratIntervals.jl (github.com/gaballench/S...) @julialang.org package. Preprint on @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social doi.org/10.1101/2025...
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
A flexible Bayesian method for estimating stratigraphic intervals and their co-occurrence in time www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
First time in four years that I don't ☺️
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
I'm happy to share our latest preprint on fossil fishes from Colombia, which represents the last piece of my PhD thesis that was still to be published. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @agenciafapesp.bsky.social @uspoficial.bsky.social @sbbe.bsky.social #cienciacriolla
biorxiv.org
Fossil Freshwater Fishes from the Pliocene of northern Colombia and the Palaeogeography of northern South America
Freshwater fishes from northern Colombia are reported from the Sincelejo and Ware formations, of Pliocene age. A total of ten taxa have been identified comprising two orders, five families, and nine g...
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Fossil Freshwater Fishes from the Pliocene of northern Colombia and the Palaeogeography of northern South America www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Honoured to have won the prize to best presentation in methods and software at the Congresso Brasileiro de Biologia Evolutiva
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Very excited to see the dissertation of my first undergrad student already available as a preprint (and submitted as well).
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
I'm happy to share our latest paper which was just published in Journal of Biogeography on the impact of the Panama Isthmus Closure on the evolution of Centropomids and related fishes. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Phylogenetic and Biogeographic History of the Snooks (Centropomidae: Carangiformes) Spanning the Closure of the Isthmus of Panama
Aim Amphiamerican New World fishes provide a unique opportunity to explore the impact of geological processes and the formation of geographic barriers on biological diversification across both spati...
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Dr. Bethany Allen @bethanyjallen.bsky.social · 31/10/2024
Looking for geological data? 🪨⚒️ We've got you! Check out our new R package for accessing Macrostrat 👇
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 23/09/2024
YouTube raised a copyright claim on one of my videos misidentifying it for a recording by the lutenist Shirley Rumsey. That's a compliment I guess.
youtu.be
Ricercar N31. Francesco Canova da Milano, Il Divino
YouTube video by Gustavo A. Ballen
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 21/09/2024
So this bluething now supports embedded videos 🤔
youtu.be
Luys de Narváez. Canción del Emperador, figueta castellana technique.
YouTube video by Gustavo A. Ballen
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Alexis Stamatakis @stamatak.bsky.social · 17/09/2024
Registrations are open for the 2025 school on computational molecular evolution in Crete, the application deadline is November 1st. meetings.embo.org/event/25-com...
meetings.embo.org
Computational Molecular Evolution
The need for effective and informed analysis of biological data is increasing with the explosive growth of genomic data. A phylogenetic framework is central to many molecular evolutionary approaches …
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Patrick McCray @patrickmccray.bsky.social · 17/09/2024
If you're having a rough day, remember that in 1991 Tim Berners-Lee's paper for the World Wide Web was rejected and he was relegated to the poster session.
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 27/08/2024
And there's people out there using it for research,and not exactly for checking the grammar 🥴
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 20/08/2024
What did the dove sing to Pope Gregory? Ancestral melody reconstruction in Gregorian chant using Bayesian phylogenetics. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
biorxiv.org
What did the dove sing to Pope Gregory? Ancestral melody reconstruction in Gregorian chant using Bayesian phylogenetics. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.19.608653v1
An attractive goal in the study of Gregorian chant melodies is reconstructing unobserved melodies as
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 20/08/2024
What did the dove sing to Pope Gregory? A thread on phylogenetics and cultural evolution featuring our new preprint with Jan Hajic jr. and Klára Mühlova (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) and previous contributions to the field.
biorxiv.org
What did the dove sing to Pope Gregory? Ancestral melody reconstruction in Gregorian chant using Bayesian phylogenetics.
bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Alexis Stamatakis @stamatak.bsky.social · 07/08/2024
Registrations are open for the 2025 school on computational molecular evolution in Crete: meetings.embo.org/event/25-com...
meetings.embo.org
Computational Molecular Evolution
The need for effective and informed analysis of biological data is increasing with the explosive growth of genomic data. A phylogenetic framework is central to many molecular evolutionary approaches …
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 20/06/2024
Our latest preprint with Sandra Reinales, this time describing the tbea R package for pre- and post-processing in Bayesian evolutionary analyses, with www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in Bayesian evolutionary analyses
bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
bioRxivpreprint @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social · 20/06/2024
tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in Bayesian evolutionary analyses www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
biorxiv.org
tbea: tools for pre- and post-processing in Bayesian evolutionary analyses https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.18.599561v1
Estimating phylogenies in which branch lengths are expressed in units of absolute time is crucial fo
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Reposted by Gustavo A. Ballen
Mauricio González-Forero @mauriciogforero.bsky.social · 23/04/2024
After 88 applications for faculty jobs and 6 applications for PI-level fellowships submitted over the last 6 years, I have been interviewed for 2 faculty jobs (ranked 2nd in one) and 1 PI-level fellowship (ranked 3rd). No offer/award.
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