Principles and Techniques of Contemporary Taxonomy
Donald L. J. Quicke(Author)
Chapman and Hall (Publisher)
Published in July 1993
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-0-7514-0020-5 (ISBN)
Description
This volume in the "Tertiary Level Biology" series fills a gap in the taxonomic literature by providing a comprehensive survey of the arguments and techniques of systematics as they are applied today to all groups of organisms. It covers the principles of nomenclature and classification, the logic and practice of cladistics, and, in a series of chapters, considers the scope, application, benefits and drawbacks of a wide range of sources of phylogenetically informative character systems, from behaviour and morphology to DNA. There is an emphasis on modern aspects of the subject. This book should be of interest to taxonomists, biochemists and evolutionary biologists at advanced undergraduate and immediate postgraduate levels.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
biography
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 148 mm
Weight
500 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7514-0020-5 (9780751400205)
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Schweitzer Classification
Content
Part 1 Introduction: the compass of taxonomy and systematics; the 1960s and the emergence of new ideas; cladistics and numerical taxonomy - the conflict; assumptions and philosophy of cladistics and the use of parsimony criteria; taxonomy and the comparative method in biology. Part 2 Characters and taxa: nature and handling of data; characters; classes of characters requiring special consideration; taxa and species concepts; what is a species. Part 3 Phylogenetic reconstruction - cladistics and related methods: cladistics and cladograms; parsimony and finding the shortest trees; which method - an overview; cladistics and classification. Part 4 Phenetic methods in taxonomy: introduction; analyzing similarity and distance data; hierarchic clustering procedures; ordination methods. Part 5 Keys and identification: introduction; types of keys; efficiency; computerized key construction. Part 6 Nomenclature and classification: introduction; the binomial system and the hierarchy of taxa; the International Commissions; basic principles of nomenclature; miscellaneous group-related factors; names of higher groups; starting dates for nomenclature; citation of authors; publication; type depositories; good practice; major taxonomic publications. Part 7 Cytotaxonomy: introduction; karyotypes; chromosome banding; chiasma frequency; inversions, translocations and their significance; in situ hybridization and genome painting. Part 8 Chemotaxonomy and related topics: origins of chemotaxonomy; classes of compounds and their biological significance; the use of chemical data. Part 9 Immunotaxonomy: history; precipitin reaction; immuno-diffusion; immuno-electrophoresis; micro-complement fixation (MC'F); use of monoclonal antibodies; radioimmunoassay; analysis of immunological data. Part 10 Proteins and taxonomy: introduction; techniques of protein electrophoresis; systematic aspects of electrophoresis; chemical protein analysis procedures; analysis of amino acid sequence data. Part 11 Nucleic acid methods: nucleic acids in taxonomy; nucleic acids in cells; G+C content; restriction fragment analysis; DNA hybridization; sequencing and associated methods; conservation versus variability; analyzing sequence data; pros and cons of hybridization and sequencing; fossil DNA. Part 12 Palaeotaxonomy, biogeography, evolution and extinction: palaeotaxonomy; biogeography; coevolution; phylogenetic trees and the pattern of evolution. Part 13 Museums, herbaria, biodiversity, conservation and the future of taxonomy: museums and their roles; the future of taxonomy.