Homology and Systematics: Coding Characters for Phylogenetic Analysis

ISBN-13: 9780748409204 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 226 str.

R. Toby Pennington; Robert W. Scotland; Toby Pennington

Opis

Systematists, comparative biologists, taxonomists and evolutionary biologists all concern themselves with the evolutionary relationships between animals and plants. Homology is the principle underlying these disciplines. When looking at groups of organisms, similarities between them (homologies) suggest a close common ancestor. For example, human and porcine insulin is very similar in structure (porcine insulin was once used to treat human diabetics). However, there are usually characteristics which would oppose such theories. For example: totally different foetal development, and the difficulty in knowing how to rank these homologies and differences, in order to make a hypothesis about evolutionary relationships. In order to do this, complex matrices are devised, where characteristics are coded, allowing theories of homology to be developed and verified. Arguing that practically nothing has been written about this matrix-building and yet it is of fundamental importance to the disciplines mentioned above, this book aims to fill this gap by discussing the different ways observations are coded and the consequences for the resulting hypotheses.

Spis treści

1. Homology and the inference of systematic relationships: some historical and philosophical perspectives, Andrew Brower 2. A survey for primary homology assessment: different botanists perceive and define characters in different ways Julie Hawkins 3. Experiments in coding multi-state characters Peter Forey and Iain Kitching 4. On characters and character states: do overlapping and non overlapping variation, morphology and molecules all yield data of the same value? Peter Stevens 5. Heuristic reconstruction of hypothetical-ancestral DNA sequences: sequence alignment versus direct optimisation Ward Wheeler 6. 'Cryptic' characters in monocotyledons: Homology and coding Paula Rudall 7. Process morphology from a cladistic perspective Peter Weston 8. Homology, coding and three taxon statement analysis Robert Scotland 9. Characters, homology and three-item analysis David Williams and Darrell Siebert Forey, The National History Museum, UK, Julie Hawkins, The University of Reading, UK, an Kitching, The Natural History Museum, UK, Toby Pennington, Royal Botanic Gardens, UK, Paula Rudall, Royal Botanic Gardens, UK, Robert Scotland, University of Oxford, UK, Peter Stevens, University of Missouri-St Louis, USA, Darrell Siebert, The Natural History Museum, UK, Peter Weston, Royal Botanic Gardens, UK, Ward Wheeler, American Museum of Natural History, USA, David Williams, The Natural History Museum, UK.

O autorze

Robert Scotland, R. Toby Pennington