Meeting outline

• Tuesday, July 22nd
  – Registration (8:30-9:30 a.m. at conference venue 2/F foyer)
  – Included Icebreaker Boat Trip (10:00 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.; depart conference venue at 9:40 a.m. sharp)
  – Included Lunch Buffet at Hyatt Regency Shatin Café (12:30–2:00 p.m.)
  – 1st Session (2:15–5:00 p.m.) (included refreshments & snacks: 3:00–4:10 p.m.)
  – Keynote Talk: The evolution of dinosaur gigantism (WHS President Diego Pol)
• Wednesday, July 23rd
  – Whole day of sessions (9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.; Symposium 1; included refreshments & snacks: 10–11:10 a.m. & 3–4:10 p.m.)
  – Included Lunch at Hyatt Regency Shatin Sha Tin 18 Restaurant (12:30p.m.–2:00 p.m.)
  – Optional self-paid Harbour Boat Tour (5:30–7:30 p.m.; depart conference venue at 5:30 p.m. sharp)
  – Council Meeting and Council Dinner (Council members only)
• Thursday, July 24th
  – Whole day of sessions (9 a.m.–5 p.m.; Symposium 2A; included refreshments & snacks: 10–11:10 a.m. & 3–4:10 p.m.)
  – Included Lunch at Hyatt Regency Shatin Sha Tin 18 Restaurant (noon–1:45 p.m.)
  – Dinner Buffet Banquet at Hyatt Regency Shatin Café (6:00–8:30 p.m.; prizes & awards presented) (pre-paid or pay in-person; student attendees receive free banquet ticket)
• Friday, July 25th
  – Three-quarter day of sessions (9 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; included refreshments & snacks: 10–11:10 a.m. & 3–4 p.m.)
  – Included Lunch Buffet at Hyatt Regency Shatin Café (noon–1:30 p.m.)
  – Meeting Summary (2:30–3:00 p.m.)
  – Fellows Meeting (3:15 p.m.) (Fellows only)
  – Included Farewell Reception at Hyatt Regency Shatin Tin Tin Bar with colleagues & students from CUHK and palaeobiology meeting (4:30–5:30 p.m.; open to public after 5:45 p.m.)

Symposia

Phylogenetics & Public Health: Lessons From COVID-19 and Emerging Threats

• Wednesday, July 23rd 9 a.m. to 12 noon
• How can evolutionary trees help us respond to pandemics? This symposium brings together scientists from across the globe to explore the power—and limits—of phylogenetics in public health. We will examine how researchers have used evolutionary methods to trace outbreaks, detect zoonotic spillovers, monitor variants, and inform policy. From SARS-CoV-2 to emerging viruses, join us to rethink what phylogenetics can do in a time of global health uncertainty.
• Organizer
  • Denis Jacob Machado – University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Analysing Datasets in Palaeontology

•  Friday, July 25th 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
• This symposium builds on two recent special issues of Cladistics ‘Analysing Datasets in Palaeontology’. It will showcase best practices and innovations related to dataset analysis in palaeontology as well as the wider implications of generated results. Symposium discussions will aim to foster and promote analytical development with symposium outcomes to be reported in a third special issue and in separate research articles.
• Organizers
  • Michael Pittman – School of Life Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
  • Santiago Catalano – Unidad Ejecutora Lillo (CONICET – Fundación Miguel Lillo) & Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán
  • Diego Pol – Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia

Pre- and Post-meeting Workshops

• students receive a US$50 discount on workshop registrations
• Workshop 1: Advanced Topics in Phylogenetic Analysis with Parsimony
  Saturday July 19^th – Monday July 21^st 2025 (directly before annual meeting)

  Instructors: Pablo A. Goloboff (Unidad Ejecutora Lillo, Argentina), Santiago Catalano (Unidad Ejecutora Lillo & Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina) & Michael Pittman (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

  Fee: US$150

  This course is intended to help students and researchers with some grasp of phylogenetic
  techniques on topics that go beyond the basics. The course requires some familiarity with
  methods for character optimization and searching trees, as well as the basic use of TNT. The course is aimed mostly to researchers working with morphological datasets, and covers several aspects and problems related with such type of data.
  Each of the topics will be introduced with a short lecture, followed by hands-on exercises to illustrate the topics discussed in the lecture.
  Saturday, July 19
  + Wildcard taxa. Reduced consensus. Methods for identification of wildcards. Wildcards
  and measures of support.
  + Tree searches and measures of support. Identifying difficult datasets. Special search
  techniques. Resampling and Bremer supports; pros and cons of each.
  Sunday, July 20
  + Placing species in a reference tree: PlaceMyFossils script
  + Morphometric and geometric morphometric data. Superimposition; combining
  multiple structures. Combining morphometric data with discrete characters. Searches.
  Synapomorphies.
  Monday, July 21
  + Character dependencies. Inapplicable characters; criteria for analysis. Recoding into
  morphotypes. Other types of dependencies. Syntax for specifying dependencies.
  Ambiguity in homology assessment. Methods for recoding.

• Workshop 2: High-throughput Species Discovery Using Nanopore Sequencing: from Specimens to Species in a Few Days
  Part 1: Sunday July 20^th – Monday July 21^st 2025 (directly before annual meeting; high-throughput DNA extraction, PCR and live Nanopore sequencing of amplicon pool)

  Part 2: Saturday July 26^th (directly after annual meeting; data analysis)

  Instructors: Rudolf Meier & Amrita Srivathsan (Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany)

  Fee: US$200

  With biodiversity loss accelerating globally, the need to document and identify species is more urgent than ever. DNA barcoding has become a powerful tool to address this challenge, especially in specimen-rich samples that are difficult to sort using traditional methods. This workshop introduces a cost-effective, scalable workflow for biodiversity discovery using the MinION sequencer from Oxford Nanopore Technologies and ONTbarcoder software. By combining rapid DNA extraction (HotSHOT), tagged PCR, and real-time MinION sequencing, participants will explore a streamlined process for generating thousands of DNA barcodes. This approach empowers labs, field stations, and citizen scientists to carry out biodiversity studies efficiently and independently.
  Through a mix of lectures and labs, students will gain practical skills in molecular biology and bioinformatics while learning how accessible technologies like MinION and ONTbarcoder are transforming biodiversity research and monitoring around the world.

  Sunday, July 20
  Lecture: Introduction to HotSHOT (HotSHOT is a quick, low-cost DNA extraction method that enables rapid processing of large bulk samples)
  Lab: From Specimens to PCR product: HotSHOT of specimens from bulk sample (Participants will extract DNA from insect specimens, preparing them for PCR amplification)
  Lecture: Introduction to “tagged” amplicon sequencing (Learn how short DNA tags on primers enable multiplexing and demultiplexing of thousands of specimens)
  Lab: “Tagged” amplicon generation using PCR (Hands-on experience generating dual-tagged amplicons for high-throughput sequencing)

  Monday, July 21
  Lecture: Biodiversity Discovery, Viewing PCR results of the gel
  Lab: Pooling and clean-up (Participants will prepare pooled amplicon libraries for sequencing through bead-based purification)
  Lecture: MinION sequencing (Understand how the MinION sequencer provides real-time, portable sequencing for biodiversity studies)
  Lab: Library Preparation and Sequencing (Students will watch the preparation of a sequencing libraries using ONT’s ligation kits and load the MinION device)

  Saturday, July 26 (Post-conference Bioinformatics Session)
  ONTbarcoder (Introduction to ONTbarcoder 2.0, a user-friendly software for demultiplexing and calling DNA barcodes in real-time)
  Species Identification with DNA barcodes
  Use barcode matches against reference databases to identify known species and flag potential new ones.
  Species Estimation (Apply clustering algorithms to barcode data to estimate species diversity in bulk samples)
  Cluster Fusion Diagrams (Visualize the relationships between barcode clusters to assess species boundaries and taxonomic resolution)

• Workshop 3: Areas of Endemism: Methods and Theory, a Critical Review
  Saturday July 26^th – Monday July 28^th 2025 (directly after annual meeting)

  Instructors: Claudia Szumik & M. Dolores Casagranda (Unidad Ejecutora Lillo, Argentina)

  Fee: US$150

  This workshop aims to provide participants with the theoretical and methodological foundations necessary to address key questions and challenges in the study of areas of endemism. It is designed to equip students with essential tools for conducting endemism analyses, combining conceptual understanding with hands-on experience using computational tools specifically developed for this purpose. To further enhance understanding of the role and scope of quantitative methods, the course also includes a critical review of historical, current, and alternative methodological approaches.

  General Structure
  The course spans three days, with each day comprising approximately 2 hours of lectures and 4 hours of practical sessions.

  Theoretical and Practical Program
  DAY 1
  – General Introduction
  – Historical biogeography and its relationship with cladistics.
  – Overview of cladistic methodology.
  – Optimality criteria in systematics and their relevance to biogeographic analysis.
  – The principle of parsimony.
  – Brief review of optimization, tree inference, ambiguity, and consensus trees.

  • Areas of Endemism – Part I
  Biogeographic patterns and the concept of areas of endemism: What are they? Why are they important? Historical review of the concept. Importance of quantitative methods and their relation to research questions.
  • Areas of Endemism – Part II
  Optimality criteria in endemism analysis. Introduction to the NDM/VNDM software. Concepts of optimality, ambiguity, support, and consensus in endemism analyses.

  DAY 2
  – Distributional Data
  – Types, sources, and repositories.
  – Georeferencing and common pitfalls: sampling biases (e.g., Wallacean, Darwinian), imperfect detection, geographic and taxonomic errors.
  – Ignorance maps, distribution polygons, ecological niche models.
  – Measures of support in biogeographic inference.
  – Data Formats
  – Use of point-based versus polygon-based distribution data.

  • Areas of Endemism – Part III
  Redundancy and analysis of supra-specific taxa. Vicariance events as exclusive and determinant factors in the origin of areas of endemism. PAE. The biogeographic hierarchy: to overlap or not to overlap?

  DAY 3
  – Review and Discussion of Methods
  – Outstanding issues and open questions.
  – Presentation: VNDM as an open-source platform (by Pablo Goloboff).
  – Hands-on analysis using participants’ own datasets.
  – Final presentations and group discussion of results.

Talk and Poster Presenters

1. Gabriel Virginia Afonso, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, USA & Departamento de Biologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil (Kurt Milton Pickett Intercontinental Award)
2. Yuchen Ang, Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore, Singapore
3. Jairo Arroyave, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
4. Joshua Batt, Flinders University, Australia (Marie Stopes Award)
5. M Dolores, Casagranda, Unidad Ejecutora Lillo – Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina (biogeography workshop instructor; invited speaker)
6. Santiago Andres Catalano (Council Member), Unidad Ejecutora Lillo – CONICET-FML, Argentina (phylogenetic analysis workshop instructor, invited speaker)
7. Zigui Chen, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), China (invited speaker of public health symposium)
8. Matthieu Chotard (host team), School of Life Sciences, CUHK, China (palaeontology symposium)
9. Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran, The University of Hong Kong, China (invited speaker of public health symposium)
10. Alexander Dececchi, Dakota State University, USA (invited speaker of palaeontology symposium)
11. Nuo Ding, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, China (Marie Stopes Award; palaeontology symposium)
12. Yui Chi Fan, School of Life Sciences, CUHK, China (host team; palaeontology symposium)
13. Vivian Feng, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany (nanopore workshop instructor; Kurt Milton Pickett Intercontinental Award)
14. Ivonne J. Garzón-Orduña, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico (invited speaker)
15. Pablo A. Goloboff, CONICET, Argentina (phylogenetic analysis workshop instructor; invited speaker)
16. Markus Grams, Institut für Biowissenschaften, Universität Rostock, Germany
17. Maxime Grosmougin (host team), School of Life Sciences, CUHK, China (palaeontology symposium)
18. Haogao Gu, The University of Hong Kong, China (invited speaker of public health symposium)
19. Sayal Guirales-Medrano, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA (online; public health)
20. Michael B Habib, Department of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, USA (invited speaker of palaeontology symposium)
21. Csaba Hefler (host team), School of Life Sciences, CUHK, China (palaeontology symposium)
22. Tatsuya Hirasawa, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of Tokyo (palaeontology symposium)
23. Dongyu Hu, College of Palaeontology, Shenyang Normal University, China (palaeontology symposium)
24. Natalia Jagielska (host team), School of Life Sciences, CUHK, China (palaeontology symposium)
25. Larry Jiménez-Ferbans, Universidad del Magdalena, Colombia (invited speaker)
26. Joan Kolasa, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Germany (Kurt Milton Pickett Intercontinental Award)
27. Kohta Kubo, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan (palaeontology symposium)
28. Hongqing Li, School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, China (Marie Stopes Award; palaeontology symposium)
29. Denis Jacob Machado, Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA (public health symposium organiser)
30. Qi Li, School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, China (Marie Stopes Award; palaeontology symposium)
31. Paul A. Maier, FamilyTreeDNA, Gene by Gene, USA (invited speaker)
32. Omkar Marne, Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (online)
33. Rudolf Meier (Editor-in-Chief Cladistics), Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany (invited speaker; nanopore workshop instructor)
34. Ivan Neo, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore
35. Maureen O’Leary (Vice-President), Stony Brook University, USA (online; palaeontology symposium)
36. Fabio Goncalves de Lima Oliveira, Finnish Museum of Natural History, Finland (Early Career Travel Award)
37. Michael Pittman (meeting host; Council Member), School of Life Sciences, CUHK (phylogenetic analysis workshop instructor; palaeontology symposium organiser)
38. Diego Pol (President), Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales “Bernardino Rivadavia” – CONICET (invited speaker of palaeontology symposium)
39. Nicholas Post, American Museum of Natural History, USA
40. Jayanthi Puniamoorthy, Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore, Singapore
41. Stefan Richter, Institut für Biowissenschaften, Universität Rostock, Germany
42. Jacqueline Silviria, Department of Earth & Space Science, University of Washington, USA (Kurt Milton Pickett Intercontinental Award)
43. Amrita Srivathsan, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Germany (nanopore workshop instructor)
44. Claudia Szumik, Unidad Ejecutora Lillo – CONICET, Argentina (biogeography workshop instructor, invited speaker)
45. Eunice Tan, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore
46. Sergei Tarasov, Finnish Museum of Natural History, Finland
47. Antonio Todaro, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia & National Biodiversity Future Center, Italy
48. Ambrosio Torres Galvis, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery, Germany (Hennig social media officer; Early Career Travel Award)
49. Yurika Uno, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of Tokyo (Marie Stopes Award; palaeontology symposium)
50. Oscar Wallnoefer, Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy (Kurt Milton Pickett Intercontinental Award)
51. Maggie Wang, School of Public Health and Primary Care, CUHK, China (invited speaker of public health symposium)
52. Shiying Wang, College of Palaeontology, Shenyang Normal University, China (Early Career Travel Award; palaeontology symposium)
53. Shuo Wang, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, China (palaeontology symposium)
54. Melissa Weintraub-Kahan, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México (Kurt Milton Pickett Intercontinental Award)
55. Kacper Węgrzyn (host team), School of Life Sciences, CUHK, China (palaeontology symposium)
56. Xing Xu, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology, China (invited speaker of palaeontology symposium)
57. Mark Young, School of Biological Sciences, University of Southampton, UK (online)
58. Shawn Zack, The University of Arizona College of Medicine, USA
59. Yanyun Zhang, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, China (palaeontology symposium)
60. Guoyi Zhang, Australian Museum Research Institute; School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia (Marie Stopes Award)

Travel Awards

• please see cladistics.org/awards for a summary of available travel awards
• deadline for submission passed – all funds spent

Meeting and Workshop Registration & Payment

• see link to the registration and payment page below
• Early Bird Registration passed (regular registration fees apply 1 March – 21 July 2025)
• all students attending the meeting receive a free ticket to the Banquet (worth US$65)
• students receive a US$50 discount on workshop registrations
• registration fees:
  • Student WHS member: US$200
  • Student non-member: US$215 (includes WHS 2025 membership and free banquet ticket worth US$65)
  • WHS member (faculty, postdoc & other non-student) without banquet ticket: US$270
  • WHS member (faculty, postdoc & other non-student) with banquet ticket: US$335
  • Non-member (faculty, postdoc & other non-student) without banquet ticket: US$285 (includes WHS 2025 membership)
  • Non-member (faculty, postdoc & other non-student) with banquet ticket: US$350 (includes WHS 2025 membership)