Anyone interested in comparative biology or the history of science will find this myth-busting work genuinely fascinating. It draws attention to the seminal studies and important advances that have shaped systematic and biogeographic thinking. It traces concepts in homology and classification from the 19th century to the present through the provision of a unique anthology of scientific writings from Goethe, Agassiz, Owen, Naef, Zangerl and Nelson, among others.

Foundations of Biogeography provides facsimile reprints of seventy-two works that have proven fundamental to the development of the field. From classics by Georges-Louis LeClerc Compte de Buffon, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Darwin to equally seminal contributions by Ernst Mayr, Robert MacArthur, and E. O. Wilson, these papers and book excerpts not only reveal biogeography's historical roots but also trace its theoretical and empirical development. Selected and introduced by leading biogeographers, the articles cover a wide variety of taxonomic groups, habitat types, and geographic regions. Foundations of Biogeography will be an ideal introduction to the field for beginning students and an essential reference for established scholars of biogeography, ecology, and evolution. List of Contributors John C. Briggs, James H. Brown, Vicki A. Funk, Paul S. Giller, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Lawrence R. Heaney, Robert Hengeveld, Christopher J. Humphries, Mark V. Lomolino, Alan A. Myers, Brett R. Riddle, Dov F. Sax, Geerat J. Vermeij, Robert J. Whittaker

Most students who take a course in biological systematics do so to learn how to construct a data matrix and generate and evaluate a tree of phylogenetic relationships. Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications, by Randall T. Schuh, provides a welcome tool for these students and their instructors: it is a comprehensive and completely new textbook, the first of its kind since 1981. Systematics, the study of the reconstruction of the history of life, forms the underlying basis for organizing the knowledge of biology; cladistics is the diagrammatic method of charting phylogenetic relationships over time among evolving life forms. Cladistics analysis, the key tool used in this book, is also of great use outside pure systematic studies, and interests many students of population biology, ecology, epidemiology, and natural resources.Suitable for both graduate and advanced undergraduate students, Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications covers the core material for courses in biological systematics, with equal emphasis on both botany and zoology. It includes sections on the history and resources of the field; biological nomenclature; the theory of homology, character analysis, and computer algorithms; and the application of the results of systematic studies in the areas of biological classification, biogeography, adaptation and co-evolution, and biodiversity and conservation.

Through case studies, this book makes sense of the profound revolution that historical biogeography has undergone in the last two decades, and of the resulting confusion over its foundations, basic concepts, methods, and relationships to other disciplines of comparative biology.

Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications draws equally from examples in botany and zoology to provide a modern account of cladistic principles and techniques. It is a core systematics textbook with a focus on parsimony-based approaches for students and biologists interested in systematics and comparative biology. Randall T. Schuh and Andrew V. Z. Brower cover: -the history and philosophy of systematics and nomenclature; -the mechanics and methods of analysis and evaluation of results; -the practical applications of results and wider relevance within biological classification, biogeography, adaptation and coevolution, biodiversity, and conservation; and -software applications. This new and thoroughly revised edition reflects the exponential growth in the use of DNA sequence data in systematics. New data techniques and a notable increase in the number of examples from molecular systematics will be of interest to students increasingly involved in molecular and genetic work.

Phylogeny inference and the classification of organisms are indispensable for all fields of biology. On the basis of a well corroborated tree of life it is possible to understand the evolution of structure and function, of genomes, of gene families, of cascades of developmental genes, and the origin of genes of medical importance. Ecologists need a stable classification of organisms to identify organisms, to find their correct names and thus further information on relevant species. This book offers an introduction to the theory of Phylogenetic Systematics and is a companion for all biologists who want to analyze morphological or molecular data with classical methods or with modern computer programs. The first part of the book explains the epistemological basis that is independent of the type of method used to construct phylogenetic trees. Unlike other empirical sciences, the estimation of data quality in phylogenetics is still little developed and very often neglected. Here a theoretical basis is presented that enables the systematist to assess critically and objectively the quality of different data sets and to make statements on the plausibility of results. This requires a conception of the notions of information content, probability of homology, probability of cognition, probability of events, the principle of parsimony, the differentiation of phenomenological and modelling methods. Willi Hennig's original method is compared with modern numerical systematics and an updated Hennigian procedure of data analysis is discussed. The difference between phenetic and phylogenetic cladistics is explained. Popular tools for data evaluation implemented in computer programs are explained including their axiomatic assumptions, sources of error and possible applications. For the more common tools the mathematical background is explained in a simple, easy-to-understand way.Johann-Wolfgang Wagele was until recently head of the Department for Animal Systematics (Lehrstuhl fur Spezielle Zoologie) at the University of Bochum and is now director of the Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn (Germany). His main research interests are the taxonomy, phylogeny and biodiversity of Isopoda, which implies observations of life history, biogeography and ecology in combination with phylogeny inference. Further subjects include arthropod phylogeny and tools for explorative data analyses. The author is president of the Gesellschaft fur Biologische Systematik, a Central European society of systematists, and he is actively promoting biodiversity research.