Assembling the Tree of Life

by Cracraft, Joel; Donoghue, Michael J.

• ISBN13: 9780195172348
• ISBN10: 0195172345
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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, andmicrobiologists. An essential reference in this fundamental area.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. ix
Introduction: Charting the Tree of Life	p. 1
The Importance of Knowing the Tree of Life
The Importance of the Tree of Life to Society	p. 7
A Tangled Bank: Reflections on the Tree of Life and Human Health	p. 18
The Fruit of the Tree of Life: Insights into Evolution and Ecology	p. 25
The Origin and Radiation of Life on Earth
The Tree of Life: An Overview	p. 43
The Early Branches in the Tree of Life	p. 76
Bacteria and Archaea	p. 86
The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes	p. 95
Viruses and the Tree of Life	p. 107
The Relationships of Green Plants
Algal Evolution and the Early Radiation of Green Plants	p. 121
The Radiation of Vascular Plants	p. 138
The Diversification of Flowering Plants	p. 154
The Relationships of Fungi
The Fungi	p. 171
The Relationships of Animals: Overview
The History of Animals	p. 197
Protostomes and Platyhelminthes: The Worm's Turn	p. 209
The Relationships of Animals: Lophotrochozoans
Toward a Tree of Life for Annelida	p. 237
The Mollusca: Relationships and Patterns from Their First Half-Billion Years	p. 252
The Relationships of Animals: Ecdysozoans
Arthropod Systematics: The Comparative Study of Genomic, Anatomical, and Paleontological Information	p. 281
Arachnida	p. 296
Are the Crustaceans Monophyletic?	p. 319
Phylogenetic Relationships and Evolution of Insects	p. 330
Phylogeny of the Holometabolous Insects: The Most Successful Group of Terrestrial Organisms	p. 345
The Relationships of Animals: Deuterostomes
From Bilateral Symmetry to Pentaradiality: The Phylogeny of Hemichordates and Echinoderms	p. 365
Chordate Phylogeny and Development	p. 384
Gnathostome Fishes	p. 410
Amphibians: Leading a Life of Slime	p. 430
Resolving Reptile Relationships: Molecular and Morphological Markers	p. 451
Phylogenetic Relationships among Modern Birds (Neornithes): Toward an Avian Tree of Life	p. 468
Building the Mammalian Sector of the Tree of Life: Combining Different Data and a Discussion of Divergence Times for Placental Mammals	p. 490
Human Origins: Life at the Top of the Tree	p. 517
Perspectives on the Tree of Life
The Meaning of Biodiversity and the Tree of Life	p. 539
A Tree Grows in Manhattan	p. 543
The Tree of Life and the Grand Synthesis of Biology	p. 545
Immeasurable Progress on the Tree of Life	p. 548
Assembling the Tree of Life: Where We Stand at the Beginning of the 21st Century	p. 553
Index	p. 563
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.