Dear Colleague,

I am organizing a symposium titled “Linking biodiversity data through phylogenetic knowledge” at the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) conference, August 25 - September 2, 2018, Dunedin, New Zealand. This meeting will be held jointly for the first time with the annual meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC). A description of the symposium is available here https://tdwg.github.io/conferences/2018/sessions/S14. I would like to invite you to submit an abstract. I would also appreciate it if you could forward this email to your colleagues or students. Thanks!

We will be able to provide a limited amount of *funding* to offset expenses where needed and on a competitive basis. Please fill in a *Google form* at this link to apply for funding: https://goo.gl/forms/SKlAXQxVnR6cBK5E3 The purpose of this form is to register your intent to submit a talk to this symposium (regardless of your need of funding), to collect demographic information on potential speakers to ensure a diverse symposium, and to solicit applications for funding to present at the symposium.

The symposium aims to illuminate opportunities offered by integrating phylogenetic knowledge with biodiversity data, examine the methodological and computational challenges of doing so, and highlight approaches addressing these challenges. We especially encourage submissions that span the domains of evolutionary biology, bioinformatics (i.e. phyloinformatics) and biodiversity informatics to address the themes of this symposium. Please note that straightforward systematics research without a data integration component will not be the focus of this symposium.

Symposium keynote speaker: Dr. Susan Perkins (American Museum of Natural History).

You *must* also submit an abstract through the conference website. Instructions are available here: https://tdwg.github.io/c onferences/2018/instructions-for-authors.

*Deadline*: Mar 12, 2018. Please contact Dr. Guanyang Zhang < gyz151@gmail.com> with any question.

Thank you, Guanyang Zhang*, Emily Jane McTavish+, Gaurav Vaidya*, Hilmar Lapp^, Nico Cellinese*

* Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida + University of California, Merced ^ Duke University

Guanyang Zhang, PhD Postdoc Research Associate @ The Cellinese Lab Florida Museum of Natural History - University of Florida 1659 Museum Road PO Box 117800 Gainesville, FL 32611 somanyinsects.org Email: gyz151@gmail.com gzhang@floridamuseum.ufl.edu Tel (mobile): 812-320-2619