Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications - Hardcover

Schuh, Randall T.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801436753 ISBN 13: 9780801436758

Publisher: Comstock Pub. Associates, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Randall T. Schuh is Curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History. He is the author of the first edition of Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications and coauthor of True Bugs of the World (Hemiptera: Heteroptera): Classification and Natural History, both from Cornell, as well as Plant Bugs of the World.

Andrew V. Z. Brower is Associate Professor of Biology at Middle Tennessee State University.

Review

"This is an excellent book. Written by a practising systematist with a keen interest in the theoretical development of systematics, it has a blend of theory and empiricism which results in a very authoritative treatment...In total, I thoroughly recommend this book...[It] demands to be read as much for its readability as its content."--Peter Forey, The Natural History Museum, London. The Paleontological Assoication Newsletter, October 2001

Edition details

• Publisher: Comstock Pub. Associates
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801436753
• ISBN 13: 9780801436758
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 236