Evolution__3rd_Edition

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Reconstruction of
Phylogeny
15The
A knowledge of the phylogenetic relations among species
is essential for many other inferences in biology, and a
proportionally large effort has been put into reconstructing
the tree of life. Classically, phylogenies were inferred using
morphological evidence from living and fossil species.
Phylogenies are now increasingly inferred from molecular
sequence evidence. The principles of phylogenetic inference
from morphological and molecular evidence are
fundamentally the same, but the techniques used differ in
many ways and the chapter looks at the two separately. We
begin with “cladistic” techniques, which are used with
morphological evidence. We then move on to molecular
evidence, looking at three classes of statistical procedure. We
also look at when these statistical procedures lead to the right,
and the wrong, inference. We finish with a classic case study
from human evolution in which different kinds of evidence
came into conflict.