Main Research Interests
My interests are in developing and using phylogenetic (tree-like) and associated methods to recover the history of life and to put dates and places on events in evolution. The tree of life is a leading paradigm in evolutionary biology and one which applies to many classes of biological object including individual genes, species and phyla, and is of widespread usefulness. My research is not restricted to any one taxon but covers a broad range, from the evolution of individual genes to the interactions among speciating lineages.

Background
My first career was in economics but about 20 years ago I swapped tax for taxonomy and it was the best move I ever made. After a stint in the Research School of Biological Sciences at ANU and another at the CSIRO Division of Entomology I have been at the School of Botany and Zoology since 2000. I keep many research connections, in particular with the entomologists at CSIRO, and when pressed to name 'my taxon' I mention dragonflies.

Current Research Projects
My open project list changes very rapidly in terms of species (taxa) and systems (genes) but is more stable as measured by techniques. This is a snapshot of papers at various stages of preparation in August 2007:

• Characterisation of a novel alpha-helical silk gene from insects
• Species boundaries among albatrosses
• The evolution of Troidine butterflies
• Making interactive keys to the families of Australian insects
• The evolution and biogeography of Pardalotidae (pardalotes, scrubwrens, thornbills)
• Bias in phylogenetic bootstraps
• The susceptibility of POY to long branch attraction
• Family-level relationships in Odonata
• New species of nemotodes in the genus Pratylenchus

Current Students
Primary supervisor

• Rohan Wilson (PhD): The effect of climate change on a tropical invertebrate fauna.
• Il-Kwon Kim (PhD): Gall inducing wasps (Eulophidae) on Eucalyptus
• Vicky Hatton (Hons): On some very cute Australian alpine cockroaches (Polyzosteria)
• Brooke Perkins (Hons): On ladybird beetles that eat ants

Panel membership

• Linda Zheng (PhD): Viral informatics of Potyviruses
• Ian Baird (PhD, UWS): Ecology and conservation of Petalura gigantea (Odonata)
• Debbie Argue (PhD): Fossil humans with reference to the 'Hobbit' from Flores.
• Bobbie Hitchcock (PhD): The Light-Brown Apple Moth complex
• Robert Beattie (MSc): The Belmont (NSW) fossil insect beds

Potential honours projects
Egg structures in an Australian dragonfly: The eggs of one Australian dragonfly are exceptional in having thread-like strands attached to the posterior pole. The purpose is unknown. The function, the composition and the mode of production of these strands needs to be investigated. Fieldwork: northern Australia; lab-work BoZo and CSIRO.

Biologically plausible homology alignments: Multiple sequence alignments for phylogenetic use need to identify evolutionary homologies at the individual position level. Current alignment algorithms incorporate remarkably little knowledge of evolutionary processes. A biologist with a computing background surely could find ways to incorporate common evolutionary processes into an alignment program, including sequence duplication (the existing methods align the single copy in one sequence against an arbitrarily chosen copy in the other sequence, ignoring second and subsequent copies) and inversion (the existing methods omit this altogether), in a realistic manner.

Molecular phylogeny of free-living marine nematodes: Australian beaches and estuaries are home to very many small, interstitial species of free-living marine nematodes. Systematic studies to date have used only morphological characters and the resulting phylogenies may not be very accurate. A revisionary taxonomic study using molecular data would be technically challenging because of the small size of the organisms but would advance our knowledge of relationships, geographical distributions and the ages of the taxa.

Potential PhD projects
Evolution of Insect Silks: Silks are produced by a wide variety of arthropods including many orders of insect, and non-homology of both the silks themselves and silk-secreting organs attests to the fact that silk has been invented many times. This is a project to study the taxonomic distribution, molecular characteristics, and functional properties of insect silks and to explore the metabolic constraints on silk evolution via the relationship between silk composition and diet. We envisage joint supervision between ANU and CSIRO Division of Entomology, with potential patentable outcomes, industry links and (we expect) funding to top-up an APA stipend.

An inordinate fondness for insects (and other invertebrates): Very many taxa in 'the other 95%' of non-charismatic, non-cuddly animals are poorly known, suggest interesting lines of study in evolutionary biology or biogeography, have great potential economic or ecological significance with or without climate change, have not been worked on for upward of 50 years, are thundering headlong toward extinction or else to becoming pest species, or in some other way demand our urgent attention. As a PhD student you will devote three years to becoming the World's most knowledgeable expert on your chosen invertebrate taxon or system. All I ask is that the evolutionary biology questions are interesting and the project is both feasible and fundable. Canberra has exceptional facilities for invertebrate study and this lab has close links to the Australian National Insect Collection, so if you are self-motivated, self-directed and keen, carve your own PhD path in the taxon of your choice.

Courses taught in 2008
BIOL3115 Entomology is the study of insects. This course examines insect biology with reference to other terrestrial invertebrates and covers major aspects of the morphology, physiology, life history and classification of insects. Research scientists from the CSIRO Division of Entomology provide further detail on some significant groups of insects and introduce current research topics in insect biology, biodiversity and conservation.

BIOL3157 Two general themes underlie much of the material covered in this course: (1) examining genetic variation from an evolutionary perspective; (2) considering the information in the genome (uncovering the patterns and processes of evolution from genetic data using bioinformatic analyses). The first half of the course will provide the necessary grounding in molecular evolution to understand the generation of genetic variation, including DNA structure and replication, mutation, neutral theory, selection, genome evolution and the genetics of complex traits. The second half of the course will put these principles into practice, covering the essential tools in bioinformatic analysis, database searching, sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis and molecular dating.

Other affiliations
Member of the editorial board of Systematic Biology.

Publications 2004-08
Palmer, C.M., Trueman, J.W.H., Yeates, D.K. 2007. Systematics of the Apteropanorpidae (Insecta: Mecoptera) based on morphological and molecular evidence. Invertebrate Systematics 21: 589-612.

Sutherland, T.D., Weisman, S., Trueman, H.E., Sriskantha, A., Trueman, J.W.H., Haritos, V.S. 2007. Conservation of Essential Design Features in Coiled Coil Silks. Molecular Biology and Evolution 24(11): 2424-2432.

Trueman, J.W.H. 2007. A brief history of the classification and nomenclature of Odonata. Zootaxa 1668: 381-394.

Wilson, R.D., Trueman, J.W.H., Williams, S.E., Yeates, D.K. 2007. Altitudinally restricted communities of Schizophoran flies in Queensland's Wet Tropics: vulnerability to climate change. Biodiversity and Conservation 16: 3163-3177.

Gray, RE, Nicholas, WL, Trueman, JWH, and Hodda, M. (2006) Phylum Nematoda Potts, 1932, In the Australian Faunal Directory

Braby, MF and Trueman, JWH, (2006) Evolution of larval host plant associations and adaptive radiation in pierid butterflies. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19:1667-1690.

Abbott, C., Double, M., Trueman, J., Robinson, A., Cockburn, A., (2005) "An unusual source of apparent mitochondrial heteroplasmy: duplicate mitochondrial control regions in Thalassarche albatrosses", Molecular Ecology, Vol 14, pp 3605-3613.

Braby, M., Trueman, J., Eastwood, R., (2005) "When and where did troidine butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) evolve? Phylogenetic and biogeographic evidence suggests an origin in remnant Gondwana in the Late Cretaceous", Invertebrate Systematics, Vol 19, pp 113-143.

De Barro, P., Trueman, J., Frohlich, D., (2005) " Bemisia argentifolii is a race of B. tabaci (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae): the molecular genetic differentiation of B. tabaci populations around the world", Bulletin of Entomological Research, Vol 95, pp 1-11.

Hayward, D., Trueman, J., Bastiani, M., Ball, E., (2005) "The structure of the USP/RXR of Xenos pecki indicates that Strepsiptera are not closely related to Diptera", Development Genes and Evolution, Vol 215, pp 213-219.

Nicholas, W., Trueman, J., (2005) "Biodiversity of marine nematodes in Australian sandy beaches from tropical and temperate regions", Biodiversity and Conservation, Vol 14, pp 823-839.

Trueman, J., Pfeil, B., Kelchner, S., Yeates, D., (2004) "Did stick insects really regain their wings?", Systematic Entomology, Vol 29, pp 138-139.