Phylogenies in Ecology is the first book to critically review the application of phylogenetic methods in ecology, and it serves as a primer to working ecologists and students of ecology wishing to understand these methods. This book demonstrates how phylogenetic information is transforming ecology by offering fresh ways to estimate the similarities and differences among species, and by providing deeper, evolutionary-based insights on species distributions, coexistence, and niche partitioning. Marc Cadotte and Jonathan Davies examine this emerging area's explosive growth, allowing for this new body of hypotheses testing. Cadotte and Davies systematically look at all the main areas of current ecophylogenetic methodology, testing, and inference. Each chapter of their book covers a unique topic, emphasizes key assumptions, and introduces the appropriate statistical methods and null models required for testing phylogenetically informed hypotheses. The applications presented throughout are supported and connected by examples relying on real-world data that have been analyzed using the open-source programming language, R. Showing how phylogenetic methods are shedding light on fundamental ecological questions related to species coexistence, conservation, and global change, Phylogenies in Ecology will interest anyone who thinks that evolution might be important in their data.

Over the past decade, ecologists have increasingly embraced phylogenetics, the study of evolutionary relationships among species. As a result, they have come to discover the field’s power to illuminate present ecological patterns and processes. Ecologists are now investigating whether phylogenetic diversity is a better measure of ecosystem health than more traditional metrics like species diversity, whether it can predict the future structure and function of communities and ecosystems, and whether conservationists might prioritize it when formulating conservation plans. In Phylogenetic Ecology, Nathan G. Swenson synthesizes this nascent field’s major conceptual, methodological, and empirical developments to provide students and practicing ecologists with a foundational overview. Along the way, he highlights those realms of phylogenetic ecology that will likely increase in relevance—such as the burgeoning subfield of phylogenomics—and shows how ecologists might lean on these new perspectives to inform their research programs.

Phylogenetic comparative approaches are powerful analytical tools for making evolutionary inferences from interspecific data and phylogenies. The phylogenetic toolkit available to evolutionary biologists is currently growing at an incredible speed, but most methodological papers are published in the specialized statistical literature and many are incomprehensible for the user community. This textbook provides an overview of several newly developed phylogenetic comparative methods that allow to investigate a broad array of questions on how phenotypic characters evolve along the branches of phylogeny and how such mechanisms shape complex animal communities and interspecific interactions. The individual chapters were written by the leading experts in the field and using a language that is accessible for practicing evolutionary biologists. The authors carefully explain the philosophy behind different methodologies and provide pointers – mostly using a dynamically developing online interface – on how these methods can be implemented in practice. These “conceptual” and “practical” materials are essential for expanding the qualification of both students and scientists, but also offer a valuable resource for educators. Another value of the book are the accompanying online resources (available at: http://www.mpcm-evolution.com), where the authors post and permanently update practical materials to help embed methods into practice.

Phylogenies, or evolutionary trees, are the basic structures necessary to think about and analyze differences between species. Statistical, computational, and algorithmic work in this field has been ongoing for four decades now, and there have been great advances in understanding. Yet no book has summarized this work. Inferring Phylogenies does just that in a single, compact volume. Phylogenies are inferred with various kinds of data. This book concentrates on some of the central ones: discretely coded characters, molecular sequences, gene frequencies, and quantitative traits. Also covered are restriction sites, RAPDs, and microsatellites.

Trait-based ecology is rapidly expanding. This comprehensive and accessible guide covers the main concepts and tools in functional ecology.

An authoritative introduction to the latest comparative methods in evolutionary biology Phylogenetic comparative methods are a suite of statistical approaches that enable biologists to analyze and better understand the evolutionary tree of life, and shed vital new light on patterns of divergence and common ancestry among all species on Earth. This textbook shows how to carry out phylogenetic comparative analyses in the R statistical computing environment. Liam Revell and Luke Harmon provide an incisive conceptual overview of each method along with worked examples using real data and challenge problems that encourage students to learn by doing. By working through this book, students will gain a solid foundation in these methods and develop the skills they need to interpret patterns in the tree of life. Covers every major method of modern phylogenetic comparative analysis in R Explains the basics of R and discusses topics such as trait evolution, diversification, trait-dependent diversification, biogeography, and visualization Features a wealth of exercises and challenge problems Serves as an invaluable resource for students and researchers, with applications in ecology, evolution, anthropology, disease transmission, conservation biology, and a host of other areas Written by two of today’s leading developers of phylogenetic comparative methods

By joining phylogenetics and evolutionary ecology, this book explores the patterns of parasite diversity while revealing diversification processes.