Cladistics
A Practical Primer on CD-ROM
Peter
Skelton, Andrew Smith and Neale Monks
Cladistics
and phylogenetic reconstruction are subjects which biology
students find quite difficult to grasp when taught from
conventional textbooks. This CD provides students with
a complete self-study introductory course in phylogenetic
reconstruction using cladistic analysis. The CD is fully
interactive and includes animated sequences, questions
at the end of each section, and practical exercises. It
is the first exclusively pedagogical CD-ROM devoted to
this topic. By the end of the course students should have
a basic understanding of cladistics and be able to reconstruct
phylogenetic relationships from morphological and molecular
data. The CD-ROM is accompanied by a short textbook. The
book is meant
to be used in conjunction with the CD-ROM but can act
as a stand-alone aid to learning when the reader is away
from the computer.
Published
by Cambridge University Press in association with the
Natural History Museum, London.
Contents
Introduction; Part I. First Principles:
1.1 Reconstructing evolutionary history from observed
differences; 1.2 Parsimony and tree construction; Part
II. Characters and Homology: 2.1 Homology and homoplasy;
2.2 Homology in molecular data; 2.3 Character definition;
2.4 Weighting; Part III. Cladograms and Trees: 3.1 Rooting
procedures and character polarity; 3.2 Cladograms, phylograms,
and phylogenetic trees; 3.3 Monophyly, paraphyly, and
polyphyly; 3.4 Consensus trees; Part IV. Fit and Robustness:
4.1 Measuring goodness of fit; 4.2 Tests of robustness;
Part V. Practical Exercise: 5.1 Phylogenetic analysis
of eight species of sea-urchins; 5.2 Cladistic analysis
of morphological characters; 5.3 Cladistic analysis of
molecular characters; 5.4 Comparison of results and conclusions.
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this book from Cambridge University
Press
Specifications
ISBN:
0 521 52341 9
Price: £29.95
Format: CD-ROM
Extent: 92 pp
Published: September 2002
Subject classification:
Cladistics; phylogenetics; taxonomy
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