Introduction #2: Emily Jane McTavish

Hi! I'm Emily Jane,

I'm in my fourth year in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior program at UT Austin, in the Hillis lab. I am currently working on a few projects. For my dissertation I am using spatially explicit simulation (DIM SUM) to assess robustness of phylogeographic methods to violations of their assumptions, in particular the impacts of sampling, and of non-gaussian dispersal distribution on inference of population structure. As well I am using 55K SNP data to reconstruct population structure of new world cattle breeds and am investigating genomic patterns of introgression in Texas longhorn cattle. I am particularly excited about applying genomic data to phylogeographic questions, and developing appropriate models of evolution to analyze these data.