Overview

Evolution is a complex process, acting at multiple scales, from DNA sequences and proteins to populations of species. Understanding and reconstructing evolution is of major importance in numerous subfields of biology. For example, phylogenetics and sequence evolution is central to comparative genomics, attempts to decipher genomes, and molecular epidemiology. Phylogenetics is also the focal point of large-scale international biodiversity assessment initiatives such as the 'Tree of Life' project, which aims to build the evolutionary tree for all extant species. Since the pioneering work in phylogenetics in the 1960s, models have become increasingly sophisticated to account for the inherent complexity of evolution. They rely heavily on mathematics and aim at modelling and analyzing biological phenomena such as horizontal gene transfer, heterogeneity of mutation, and speciation and extinction processes. This book presents these recent models, their biological relevance, their mathematical basis, their properties, and the algorithms to infer them from data. A number of subfields from mathematics and computer science are involved: combinatorics, graph theory, stringology, probabilistic and Markov models, information theory, statistical inference, Monte Carlo methods, continuous and discrete algorithmics. This book arises from the Mathematics of Evolution & Phylogenetics meeting at the Mathematical Institute Henri Poincaré, Paris, in June 2005 and is based on the outstanding state-of-the-art reports presented by the conference speakers. Ten chapters - based around five themes - provide a detailed overview of key topics, from the underlying concepts to the latest results, some of which are at the forefront of current research.

Full Product Details

Author:   Olivier Gascuel (, Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier) ,  Mike Steel (, University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.40cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 25.30cm
Weight:   0.742kg
ISBN:  

9780199208227

ISBN 10:   0199208220
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   28 June 2007
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

O Gascuel and M Steel: Introduction List of Contributors I Evolution in populations 1: J Felsenstein: Trees of genes in populations 2: A Rodrigo, G Ewing, A Drummond: The evolutionary analysis of measurably evolving populations using serially sampled gene sequences II Models of sequence evolution 3: O Gascuel and S Guindon: Modelling the variability of evolutionary processes 4: E Allman and J Rhodes: Phylogenetic invariants III Tree shape, speciation and extinction 5: A Mooers, L Harmon, M Blum, D Wong, S Heard: Some models of phylogenetic tree shape 6: K Hartmann and M Steel: Phylogenetic diversity: from combinatorics to ecology IV Trees from subtrees and characters 7: M Sanderson, C Ané, O Eulenstein, D Fernández-Baca, J Kim, M McMahon, R Piaggio-Talice: Fragmentation of large data sets in phylogenetic analyses 8: S Grünewald and K Huber: Identifying and defining trees V From trees to networks 9: D Huson: Split networks and reticulate networks 10: C Semple: Hybridization networks Index

Reviews

I would recommend this book to phylogenetists who wish to have an overview on the topics covered herein. Biometricians or statisticians curious about evolutionary problems may find some inspiration in these pages aswell. Biometrics

Author Information

Olivier Gascuel leads a research group at LIRMM-CNRS, Montpellier. He is an associate editor of Systematic Biology and belongs to the editorial board of BMC-Bioinformatics, BMC-Evolutionary Biology, and BMC-Algorithms for Molecular Biology. He has published 110 papers and book chapters, and authored several widely used programs in phylogenetics and bioinformatics. Mike Steel directs the Biomathematics Research Centre at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and is an associate editor of the journal Systematic Biology. He has published 120 papers and book chapters on mathematical aspects of evolutionary biology, and is co-author of the book Phylogenetics (Oxford University Press, 2003).

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