Assembling The Tree Of Life

This edited volume is provides an authoritative synthesis of knowledge about the history of life. All the major groups of organisms are treated, by the leading workers in their fields. With sections on: The Importance of Knowing the Tree of Life; The Origin and Radiation of Life on Earth; The Relationships of Green Plants; The Relationships of Fungi; and The Relationships of Animals. This book should prove indispensable for evolutionary biologists, taxonomists, ecologists interested in biodiversity, and as a baseline sourcebook for organismic biologists, botanists, and microbiologists. An essential reference in this fundamental area.

The Great Tree of Life is a concise, approachable treatment that surveys the concept of the Tree of Life, including chapters on its historical introduction and cultural connection. The Tree of Life is a metaphor used to describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct. It has been widely recognized that the relationship between the roughly 10 million species on earth drives the ecological system. This work covers options on how to build the tree, demonstrating its utility in drug discovery, curing disease, crop improvement, conservation biology and ecology, along with tactics on how to respond to the challenges of climate change. This book is a key aid on the improvement of our understanding of the relationships between species, the increasing and essential awareness of biodiversity, and the power of employing modern biology to build the tree of life. Provides a single reference describing the properties, history and utility of The Tree of Life Introduces phylogenetics and its applications in an approachable manner Written by experts on the Tree of Life Includes an online companion site containing various original videos to enhance the reader’s understanding and experience

To document the world’s diversity of species and reconstruct the tree of life we need to undertake some simple but mountainous tasks. Most importantly, we need to tackle species rich groups. We need to collect, name, and classify them, and then position them on the tree of life. We need to do this systematically across all groups of organisms and because of the biodiversity crisis we need to do it quickly. With contributions from key systematic and taxonomic researchers, Reconstructing the Tree of Life: Taxonomy and Systematics of Species Rich Taxa outlines the core of the problem and explores strategies that bring us closer to its solution. The editors split the book into three parts: introduction and general concepts, reconstructing and using the tree of life, and taxonomy and systematics of species rich groups (case studies). They introduce, with examples, the concept of species rich groups and discuss their importance in reconstructing the tree of life as well as their conservation and sustainable utilization in general. The book highlights how phylogenetic trees are becoming “supersized” to handle species rich groups and the methods that are being developed to deal with the computational complexity of such trees. It discusses factors that have lead some groups to speciate to a staggering degree and also provides case studies that highlight the problems and prospects of dealing with species rich groups in taxonomy. To understand species rich taxa, evolution has set scientists a difficult, but not unattainable, challenge that requires the meshing together of phylogenetics and taxonomy, considerable advances in informatics, improved and increased collecting, training of taxonomists, and significant financial support. This book provides the tools and methods needed to meet that challenge.

“Only God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a “biography” of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important — organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’s modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other plants and animals. The tree’s pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text and Robert Bateman’s original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too often taken for granted.

This ambitious book considers social scientific topics such as identity, community, sexual difference, self, and ecology from a microbial perspective. Harnessing research and evidence from earth systems science and microbiology, and particularly focusing on symbiosis and symbiogenesis, the book argues for the development of a microontology of life.

The most up-to-date book on invertebrates, providing a new framework for understanding their place in the tree of life In The Invertebrate Tree of Life, Gonzalo Giribet and Gregory Edgecombe, leading authorities on invertebrate biology and paleontology, utilize phylogenetics to trace the evolution of animals from their origins in the Proterozoic to today. Phylogenetic relationships between and within the major animal groups are based on the latest molecular analyses, which are increasingly genomic in scale and draw on the soundest methods of tree reconstruction. Giribet and Edgecombe evaluate the evolution of animal organ systems, exploring how current debates about phylogenetic relationships affect the ways in which aspects of invertebrate nervous systems, reproductive biology, and other key features are inferred to have developed. The authors review the systematics, natural history, anatomy, development, and fossil records of all major animal groups, employing seminal historical works and cutting-edge research in evolutionary developmental biology, genomics, and advanced imaging techniques. Overall, they provide a synthetic treatment of all animal phyla and discuss their relationships via an integrative approach to invertebrate systematics, anatomy, paleontology, and genomics. With numerous detailed illustrations and phylogenetic trees, The Invertebrate Tree of Life is a must-have reference for biologists and anyone interested in invertebrates, and will be an ideal text for courses in invertebrate biology. A must-have and up-to-date book on invertebrate biology Ideal as both a textbook and reference Suitable for courses in invertebrate biology Richly illustrated with black-and-white and color images and abundant tree diagrams Written by authorities on invertebrate evolution and phylogeny Factors in the latest understanding of animal genomics and original fossil material

The growing success of molecular methods has challenged traditional views of animal evolution and a large number of alternative hypotheses are hotly debated today. For the deep metazoan phylogeny project, data sets of hitherto unmatched quality and quantity were compiled and analysed with innovative bioinformatics tools. The book begins at the base of the tree of life to discuss the origin of animals and early branches of the phylogenetic tree. The following section presents special data sets gained from mitochondrial genomes and from morphology, with a focus on nervous systems. The final section is dedicated to theoretical aspects of data analysis and new bioinformatics tools. The book closes with a unique general discussion of all hypotheses contained in previous chapters.This work provides the most comprehensiveoverview available of the state of the art in this exciting field of evolutionary research.