Assembling the Tree of Life

Edited by Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue

This book is designed to be the most authoritative synthesis of knowledge about the history of life. All the major groups of organisms are treated by the leading workers in their fields. This book should prove indispensable for evolutionary biologists, taxonomists, and ecologists interested in biodiversity. It will also become a sourcebook for oranismic biologists, botanists, and microbiologists. It should be the standard reference in this fundamental area for the next ten years.

Assembling the Tree of Life

Edited by Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue

Description

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.

Assembling the Tree of Life

Edited by Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue

Contributors
Introduction: Charting the Tree of Life
Michael J. Donoghue and Joel Cracraft
The Importance of Knowing the Tree of Life
1. The Importance of the Tree of Life to Society, Terry L. Yates, Jorge Salazar-Bravo, and Jerry W. Dragoo
2. A Tangled Bank: Reflections on the Tree of Life and Human Health, Rita R. Colwell
3. The Fruit of the Tree of Life: Insights into Evolution and Ecology, Douglas J. Futuyma
The Origin and Radiation of Life on Earth
4. The Tree of Life: An Overview, S.L. Baldauf, D. Bhattacharya, J. Cockrill, P. Hugenholtz, J. Pawlowski, and G.B. Simpson
5. The Early Branches in the Tree of Life, Norman R. Pace
6. Bacteria and Archaea, W. Ford Doolittle
7. The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes, Herve Philippe
8. Viruses and the Tree of Life, David P. Mindell, Joshua S. Rest, and Luis P. Villarreal
The Relationships of Green Plants
9. Algal Evolution and the Early Radiation of Green Plants, Charles F. Delwiche, Robert A. Anderson, Debashish Bhattacharya, Brent D. Mishler, and Richard M. McCourt
10. The Radiation of Vascular Plants, Kathleen M. Pryer, Harald Schneider, and Susana Magallon
11. The Diversification of Flowering Plants, Pamela S. Soltis, Douglas E. Soltis, Mark W. Chase, Peter K. Endress, and Peter R. Crane
The Relationship of Fungi
12. The Fungi, John W. Taylor, Joseph Spatafora, Kerry O'Donnell, Francois Lutzoni, Timothy James, David S. Hibbett, David Geiser, Thomas D. Bruns, and Meredith Blackwell
The Relationships of Animals: Overview
13. The History of Animals, Douglas J. Eernisse and Kevin J. Peterson
14. Protostomes and Platyhelminthes: The Worm's Turn
D. Timothy, J. Littlewood, Maximilian J. Telford, and Rodney A. Bray
The Relationship of Animals: Lophotrochozoans
15. Toward a Tree of Life for Annelida, Mark E. Siddall, Elizabeth Borda, and Gregory W. Rouse
16. The Mollusca: Relationships and Patterns from Their First Half-Billion Years, David R. Lindberg, Winston F. Ponder, and Gerhard Haszprunar
The Relationships of Animals: Ecdysozoans
17. Arthropod Systematics: The Comparative Study of Genomic, Anatomical, and Paleontological Information, Ward C. Wheeler, Gonzalo Giribet, and Gregory D. Edgecombe
18. Arachnida, Jonathan A. Coddington, Gonzalo Giribet, Mark S. Harvey, Lorenzo Prendini, and David E. Walter
19. Are the Crustaceans Monophyletic?, Frederick R. Schram and Stefan Koenemann
20. Phylogenetic Relationship and Evolution of Insects, Rainer Willmann
21. Phylogeny of the Holometabolous Insects: The Most Successful Group of Terrestrial Organisms, Michael F. Whiting
The Relationships of Animals: Deuterostomes
22. From Bilateral Symmetry to Pentaradiality: The Phylogeny of Hemichordates and Echinoderms, Andrew B. Smith, Kevin J. Peterson, Gregory Wray, and D.T. Littlewood
23. Chordate Phylogeny and Development, Timothy Rowe
24. Gnathostome Fishes, M.L.J. Stiassny, E.O. Wiley, G.D. Johnson, and M.R. de Carvalho
25. Amphibians: Leading a Life of Slime, David Cannatella and David M. Hillis
26. Resolving Reptile Relationships: Molecular and Morphological Markers, Michael S.Y. Lee, Todd W. Reeder, Joseph B. Slowinski, and Robin Lawson
27. Phylogenetic Relationships among Modern Birds (Neornithes): Toward an Avian Tree of Life, Joel Cracraft, F. Keith Barker, Michael Braun, John Harshman, Gareth J. Dyke, Julie Feinstein, Scott Stanley, Alice Cibois, Peter Schikler, Pamela Beresford, Jaime Garcia-Moreno, Michael D. Sorenson, Tamaki Yuri, and David P. Mindell
28. Building the Mammalian Sector of the Tree of Life: Combining Different Data and a Discussion of Divergence Times for Placental Mammals, Maureen A. O'Leary, Marc Allard, Michael J. Novacek, Jin Meng, and John Gatesy
29. Human Origins: Life at the Top of the Tree, Bernard Wood and Paul Constantino
Perspectives on the Tree of Life
30. The Meaning of Biodiversity and the Tree of Life
Edward O. Wilson
31. A Tree Grows in Manhattan, David B. Wake
32. The Tree of Life and the Grand Synthesis of Biology
David M. Hillis
33. Immeasurable Progress on the Tree of Life, Michael J. Donoghue
34. Assembling the Tree of Life: Where We Stand at the Beginning of the 21st Century, Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue
Index

Assembling the Tree of Life

Edited by Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue

Reviews and Awards

"Assembling the Tree of Life presents a preliminary view of one of the grand enterprises of modern science, resolving the phylogeny of all life... This volume, the product of a 2002 symposium by the same name held at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, seeks to blow away the mist and reveal the structure of the whole Tree and, in doing so, galvanize the systematics community toward unifying its goals." -- Science