Call for papers - Novel insights into animal phylogeny and systematics: redrawing the tree of life

Guest Editors:
Brock Fenton: Department of Biology, Western University, Canada
Federico Plazzi: Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy

Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 15 May 2024

BMC Zoology is calling for submissions to our Collection on novel insights into animal phylogeny and systematics.

The current system of classification was established 290 years ago by Carl Linnaeus and was mostly based on observable, morphological features. After Darwin’s lesson and the advent of the evolutionary theory, the classification of animals into different taxa has also become a tool for (and a consequence of) understanding the evolutionary relationships between species in the animal kingdom. With the advancement of novel molecular tools and machine learning algorithms, many of these classic relationships were challenged and new connections were revealed: well-known taxa are now abandoned, and new clades are being erected.

This collection aims to collate research articles on modern phylogeny and systematics that help us deepen our understanding of how animals evolved.

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Meet the Guest Editors

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Brock Fenton: Department of Biology, Western University, Canada

Brock (Melville Brockett) Fenton (PhD University of Toronto, FRSC) is an Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is the Deputy Executive Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Science Publishing. His research focuses on bats, and he has published widely about them, from research papers to books intended for the lay reader.

Federico Plazzi: Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy

Federico Plazzi is Senior assistant professor at the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences at University of Bologna, Italy, since 2022. Previously, he was Adjunct Professor of General Biology, Applied Statistics and Evolutionary Zoology. While coping above all with bivalve molluscs, he also worked and still works on other groups, such as hexapods and bony fishes. His research interests focus on the impact of small noncoding RNAs on eukaryotic genomes and nucleus-mitochondrion crosstalk, as well as phylogenetics, phylogenomics, and mitogenomics. To this extent, he also aims to develop statistical and computational methods and tools.

About the Collection

BMC Zoology is calling for submissions to our Collection on novel insights into animal phylogeny and systematics.

The current system of classification was established 290 years ago by Carl Linnaeus and was mostly based on observable, morphological features. After Darwin’s lesson and the advent of the evolutionary theory, the classification of animals into different taxa has also become a tool for (and a consequence of) understanding the evolutionary relationships between species in the animal kingdom. With the advancement of novel molecular tools and machine learning algorithms, many of these classic relationships were challenged and new connections were revealed: well-known taxa are now abandoned, and new clades are being erected.

This collection aims to collate research articles on modern phylogeny and systematics that help us deepen our understanding of how animals evolved.

Potential topics can include, but are not limited to, the following:

•   Molecular phylogenetics
•   Phylogenomics
•   Phylotranscriptomics
•   Horizontal gene transfer
•   Phylogeography
•   Fossil-based phylogenetics
•   Comparative morphology
•   Evo-devo
•   Integrative biology

Image credit: Jackie Niam / stock.adobe.com

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select ["Novel insights into animal phylogeny and systematics: redrawing the tree of life"] from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.