1. Introduction to phylogenetic trees and their importance in
modern biology.- 2. Tree thinking and its importance in the
development of evolutionary thought.- 3. What a phylogenetic tree
represents.- 4. Trait evolution.- 5. Relatedness and biological
classification.- 6. Gene trees and species trees.- 7. Phylogenetic
inference with parsimony.- 8. Phylogenetic inference with distance,
maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods.- 9. Statistical tests of
phylogenetic hypotheses.- 10. Using trees to reconstruct
evolutionary history.- Answers to chapter quizzes.- Literature
cited.- Glossary.- Index.
David A. Baum is a professor at the University of Wisconsin,
where he conducts research in plant systematics, systematic theory,
and plant evolutionary developmental genetics. He earned his Ph.D.
in Population and Evolutionary Biology from Washington University
in 1991, conducted postdoctoral research at the University of
Wisconsin, and then served as Assistant and Associate Professor of
Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He
returned to the University of Wisconsin in 2001, and is now
Professor and Chair of Botany and Director of the James F. Wright
Institute for the Study of Evolution. Baum's research has earned
him awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Young
Investigator Award, an NSF Career Award, and a John Simon
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. In 2006 he was elected Fellow of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science for
'outstanding contributions in the investigation of plant evolution
and for excellence in teaching and mentoring in phylogenetics and
evolutionary biology.' Baum teaches phylogenetic biology at both
the introductory and advanced levels and has been offering
workshops on phylogenies and tree thinking for K-12 teachers since
1999.
Stacey D. Smith is professor at the University of Colorado,
Boulder. Her research focuses on the evolution of floral diversity
and spans the fields of phylogenetics, evolutionary genetics,
comparative methods and pollination ecology. Supported by a British
Marshall fellowship, she earned an M.Phil in Botanical Diversity
from the Universities of Reading and Birmingham in the United
Kingdom in 2001. She returned to the United States to pursue a
doctoral degree in Systematic Botany at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. After obtaining her Ph.D. in 2006, she conducted
postdoctoral research at Duke University through a National
Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein Fellowship before joining
the faculty at the University of Nebraska in 2010. She teaches
introductory organismal biology and phylogenetic biology for
undergraduate and graduate students and sponsors outreach events to
promote public understanding of plant biology and
evolution.
"Phylogenetics has had a revolutionary impact on biology in the last few decades, but few books convey the power and beauty of the field at an introductory level like this one does. It will help fill a long empty niche in undergraduate curricula and serve as a good prerequisite to more technical treatments at the graduate level." - Michael Sanderson, University of Arizona
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