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The study of the evolution of life on Earth stands as one of the most
complex fields in science. It involves observations from very different sources,
and has implications far beyond the domain of basic science. It is concerned
with processes occurring on very long time spans, and we now know that it
is also important for our daily lives as shown by the rapid evolution of many
pathogens.
As a field ecologist, for a long time I was remotely interested in phylogenetics
and other approaches to evolution. Most of the work I accomplished
during my doctoral studies involved field studies of small mammals and estimation
of demographic parameters. Things changed in 1996 when my interest
was attracted by the question of the effect of demographic parameters on
bird diversification. This was a new issue for me, so I searched for relevant
data analysis methods, but I failed to find exactly what I needed. I started to
conduct my own research on this problem to propose some, at least partial,
solutions. This work made me realize that this kind of research critically depends
on the available software, and it was clear to me that what was offered
to phylogeneticists at this time was inappropriate.
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