Evolution d futuyama (sinauer, 2005) 1

Darwin's Evolutionary Theory 7Evolutionary Theories after Darwin 8 The Evolutionary Synthesis 9 FWldamental principles of evolution 9 Evolutionary 8iology since the Synthesis 11 Philosop

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Chapter 19, "Evolution of Genes and Genomes"

by Scott V Edwnrds, Hnrvnrd University

Chapter 20, "Evolution and Development"

by foltn R Trlle, S/n/e UIl;versity of New York at Stony Brook

SINAUER ASSOCIATES, INC • Publishers Sunderland, Massachusetts U.S.A.

Front cover

The luxurious plumes of a male

bird of pBradise(PnmdisnE'R

rngginnn),'Ire the result of sexual

selection (see Chapters 11 and 17)

Photograph©Art \'Volfe/ Art

Wolfe, Inc

Evolution

Back coverModern birds are almost certainlydescended from feathereddinosaurs, such as the famolls fossil

Archaeopteryx litltogmphict1. Longflight feathers were bornebyclawed hands and a long tail, char-acteristic of theropod dinosaurs butnot of modern birds (see Chapter4) Photograph ©Tom Stack!

Painet,Inc

Copyright © 2003bySinauer Associates, Inc AU rights reserved

This book may not be reprinted in ''''hole or in part ,,,,,ithout permission from the publisher:Sinauer Associates, Inc., 23 Plumtree Road, Sunderland, MA 01375 U.s.A

FAX: 413-549-1118

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Sources of the scientists' photographs appearing ill Chapter 1aregr<'ltefully acknowledged:

C.Darwin andA R.Wallace courtesy of The American Philosophical Library

R A.Fisher courtesy of Joan Fisher Box

J. B.S Haldane courtesy of Dr K Patau

S Wright courtesy of Doris Marie Provine

E (\llayr courtesy of Harvard News Service andE.MayI'

G.L.Stebbins, G G Simpson, and Th Dobzhansky courtesy of G.L Stebbins

J\ll. Kimura courtesyofWilliam Provine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brief Contents

Darwin's Evolutionary Theory 7

Evolutionary Theories after Darwin 8

The Evolutionary Synthesis 9

FWldamental principles of evolution 9

Evolutionary 8iology since the Synthesis 11

Philosophical Issues 12

Ethics, Religion, and Evolution 12

Evolution as Fad and Theory 13

Classification and

Classification 19

Inferring Phylogenetic History 22

SimiJarity and common ancestry 22

Complications in inferring phylogeny 23

The method of maximum parsimony 25

Anexample of phylogenetic anaJysis 28

Evaluating phylogenetic hypotheses 29

Molecular Clocks 32

Gene Trees 34

Difficulties in Phylogenetic Analysis 35

Hybridization and Horizontal Gene Transfer 39

Evolutionary History and Classification 4S

Inferring the HistoryofCharader Evolution 46 Some Patterns of Evolutionary Change Inferred from Systematics 48

Most feahlres of organisms have been modified frompre-existing features 48

Homoplasy is common 5]

Rates of character evolution differ 54EvoluLionisoften gradual 55Changeinform is often correlated withdlangein ftmction 55Similarity ben.veen species changes throughout ontogeny 56Development underlies some common patterns of morpho-logical evolution 56

Phylogenetic Analysis Documents Evolutionary Trends 61 Many Clades Display Adaptive Radiation 62

Record 67

Some Geological Fundamentals 68

Rock formation 68Plate tectonics 68Geological time 69The geological timescale 69

The Fossil Record 71

Evolutionary changes within species 71Origins of higher taxa 71

The Hominin Fossil Record 79 Phylogeny and the Fossil Record 83

Frequencies of alleles and genotypes: The Hardy-\\'einbergprinciple 193

An example: The humanMNlocus 19-:1The significance of the Hardy-Weinberg principle: Factorsinevolution 196

Frequencies of alleles, genotypes, and phenotypes 197Inbreeding 197

Kinds of mutations 166Examples of mutations 169Rates of mutation 171Phenotypic effects of mutations 17-lEffects of mutations on fitness 176The limits of l11utntion 178

Mutation asa Random Process 178 Recombination and Variation 179 Alterations ofthe Karyotype 181

Polyploidy lSIChromosome rearrangements 182

189

Estimating Changes in Taxonomic Diversity 140

ESI-imatcsoi di\·ersity 140Hates 1-1-1

Taxonomic Diversity through the Phanerozoic 143

Rnles of origination and extinction 144Causes of extinction 1-l6

Declining extinction rates 1 J.6Mass extinctions 1-l8

Origination and di\'ersification 151The role of environmental change 156

The FutureofBiodiversity 157

Biogeographic Evidence for Evolution 11B

Major PatternsofDistribution 119

Historical Factors Affecting Geographic Distributions 121

Testing Hypotheses in Historical Biogeography 123

Examples of historical biogeographic analyses 125

The composition of regional biotas 128

Phylogeography 129

Ecological Approaches toBiogeography 132

The theory of island biogeography 13 1,

Structure and diversity in ecological communities

Before Life Began 92

The Emergence ofLife 92

Precambrian Life 94

Prokaryotes

9-l-Eukaryotes 95

Proterozoic life 96

Paleozoic Life: The Cambrian Explosion 97

Paleozoic Life: Ordovician to Devonian 99

Genetic ,"ariationinproteins 202

Variation at the Dl\A le\'el 204

Multiple loci and the effects of linkage 205

Variation in quantitative traits 207

Variation among Populations 212

Patterns of geographic variahon 212

Adaptive geographic variation 116

Gene flow 216

Allele frequency differences among populations 217

Geographic variation among humans 219

at Random 225

Experimental Studies of Natural Selection 252

Bacterial populations 232Im·ersion polymorphism in Drosophila 253

~1ale reproductive success 254Population size in flour beetles 255Selfish genetic elements 256

What Not to Expect of Natural Selection and Adaptation 264

The necessity of adaptation 2fHPerfection 264

Progress 264Harmony and the balanceofnature 265

~/lorality and ethics 265

Fitness 270

Modes of selection 270Defining fitness 271Components of fitness 272

Models of Selection 273

Directional selection 273Deleterious allelesinnatural populations 278

Polymorphism Maintained by Balancing Selection 280

Heterozygote advantage 280Antagonistic and varying selection 282Frequency-dependent selection 283

Multiple Outcomes of Evolutionary Change 286

Positive frequency-dependent selection 286Heterozygote disadvantage 286

Adaptive landscapes 287Interaction of selection and genetic drift 287

Molecular Signatures of Natural Selection 288

Theoretical expectations 288Examples 290

The Strength of Natural Selection 293

The Theory of Genetic Drift 226

Genetic drift as sampling error 226

Coa lescence 227

Random fluctuations in allele frequencies 229

Evolution by Genetic Drift 231

Effective population size 231

Founder effects 232

Genetic drift in real populations 232

The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution 235

Principles of the neutrallheory 236

Variation within and among species 238

Do comparisons among species support the neutral

theor)'? 239

Gene Flow and Genetic Drift 241

Gene trees and popuJation history 241

The origin of modernHomo snpiclIs revisited 243

and Adaptation 247

Adaptations in Action: Some Examples 248

The Nature of Natural Selection 250

Design and mechanism 250

Definitions of natural selection 251

Natural selection and chance 231

Selectionofand selectionfor 252

Natural Selection 269

14 Conflict and

Cooperation 325

AFramework for Conflict and Cooperation 326

levels of organization 326

Inclusive fitness and kin selection 326

Frequcncy·dependent selection on interactions 327

Evolutionarily stable strategies 327

Sexual Selection 329

The concept of sexual selection 329

Contests behveen males and bet veen sperm 330

Evolution Observed 298

Components of Phenotypic Variation 299

How Polygenic are Polygenic Characters? 301

Linkage Disequilibrium 303

Evolution of Quantitative Characters 304

Genetic variance in natural populations 3O-l

Re~ponse to selection 305

Responses to artificial selection 306

Selection in Natural Populations 308

Measuring natural selection on quantitatiyc characters 308

Examples of selection on quantitative characters 309

ANeutral Model of the Evolution of Quantitative

Characters 311

What Maintains Genetic Variation in Quantitative

Characters? 312

Correlated Evolution of Quantitative Traits 312

Correia ted selection 312

Genetic correlation 313

Examples of genetic correla1"ion 314

How genetic correlation affects evolution 314

Can Genetics Predict Long- Term Evolution? 316

Indirect benefits of mate choice 333Antagonistic coe\'olution 337

Social Interactions and the Evolution of Cooperation 339

Theories of cooperation and altruism 339Interactions among related individuals 3-H

A Genetic Battleground: The Nuclear Family 343

Mating systems and parental care 3 1-3Infanticide, abortion, and siblicide ,3.1.5Parent-offspring conflict 3-15

Genetic Conflicts 346

ParasitisHl, mutualism, and the evolution of individuals 348

What Are Species? 354

Phylogenetic species concepts 355The biologicctl species concept 355Domain and application of the biological species concept 357

\-Vhen species concepts conflict 358

Barriersto Gene Flow 359

Premating barriers 359Postmating, prezygotic barriers 362Postzygotic barriers 362

How Species Are Diagnosed 363 Differences among Species 364 The Genetic 8asis of Reproductive Barriers 366

Genes affecting reproductive isolation 366Functions of genes that cause reproductive isolation 368Chromosome differences and postzygotic isolation 369Cytoplasmic incompatibility 370

The significance of genetic studies of reproductiveisolation 371

Molecular Divergence among Species 372 Hybridization 373

Primary and secondary hybrid zones 373Genetic dynamicsina hybrid zone 37-!

The fale of hybrid zones 375

ModesofSpeciation 380

Allopatric Speciation 381

£\'idence for allopatric speciation 381

Mechanisms of vicariant allopatric speciation 383

Ecological selection and speciation 384

Sexual selection and speciation 386

Reinforcement of reproductive isolation 387

The Nature ofCoevolution 430 Phylogenetic AspectsofSpecies Associations 431 Coevolution ofEnemies and Victims 432

Models of encn1y-victim coevolution 434Examples of predator-prey coevolution -1-35

Infectiolls disease and the evolution of parasite virulence 437

Mutualisms 439 The Evolution ofCompetitive Interactions 441

Individual Selection and Group Selection 406

Life History Evolution 407

We history traits as components of fitness -l07

Trade-offs 408

The TheoryofLife History Evolution 411

Life span and senescence -111

Age schedules of reproduction 412

:\'umber and size of offspring -113

The e\'olution of the rate of increase 414

Male reproductive success 415

ModesofReproduction 416

The evolution of mutation rates 417

Sexual and asexual reproduction 417

The problem with sex ·118

Hypotheses for the advantage of sex and recombination -l19

Sex Ratios, Sex Allocation, and Sex Determination 422

The evolution of sex ratios -1-22

Sex allocation, hermaphroditism, and dioec}' -l24

Inbreeding and Outcrossing 424

Advantages of inbreeding and outcrossing 125

Evolution ofGenes and Proteins 4S1

Adaptive evolution and neutrality 452Sequence evolution under purifying and positive selection 453Adaptive molecular evolution in primates -I-5-!

Adaptive e\'olution across the genome 456

Genome Diversity and Evolution 4S6

Di\-ersity of genome structure 456Viral and microbial genomes: The smallest genomes -!57The C-value paradox 458

Repetitive sequences and transposable elements 459

The Origin ofNew Genes 461

Lateral gene transfer 46]

Exonshuffling 462Gene chimerism and processed pseudogcnes 463tvlotif multiplication and exon loss 464

Gene duplication and gene families 465

Phylogenetic and Adaptive Diversification in Gene Families 468

Gene com-ersion -168Phylogenetic pallerns following gene duplication -1-69

Selective fates of recently duplicated loci -!69Rates of gene duplication 470

20 Evolution and

Development 473

Hox Genes and the Dawn of Modern EDB 474

Types of Evidence in Contemporary EDB 47B

The Evolving Concept of Homology 479

Evolutionarily Conserved Developmental Pathways 480

The Evolution of Gene Regulation: The Keystone of

Developmental Evolution 484

Modularity in ITlorphological evolution 485

Co~optionand the evolution of novel characters 486

The developmental genetics of heterochrony 488

The evolution of a.llometry 489

Developmental Constraints and Morphological

Rates of character evolution 502

Punctuated equilibrium, revisited 502

Stasis 504

Gradualism and Saltation 506

Phylogenetic Conservatism and Change 50B

Stabilizing selection 508

Limitations on variation 509

The Evolution of Novelty 510

Accounting for incipient and novel features 510

Complex chcll"<lCteristics 512

Trends and Progress 513

Trends: Kinds and causes 513

Examples of trends 514

Are therelTlajortrends in the history of life? 515

The question of progress 518

Creationism, and Society 523

Creationists and Other Skeptics 524 Science, Belief, and Education 525 The Evidence for Evolution 528

The fossi I record 528Phylogenetic and comparative studies 528Genes and genoilles 529

Biogeography 529F,lilures of the argument from design 529Evolution and its mechanisms, observed 531

Refuting Creationist Arguments 532

On arguing for evolution 537

Why Should We Teach Evolution? 537

Health and medicine 538Agriculture and natural resources 540Environment and conservation 541Understanding nature and humanity 541

Glossary 545 Literature Cited 555 Index 581

Since its inception dW'ing a sabbatical leave in Australia four years ago, this book has

trav-eled with me to Stony Brook, then to AIm ArbOl; and again to Stony Brook, suffering long

interruptions along the way Perhaps that is just as well, for the transfonnation of lutionary blology has been even faster in this interval than before, aJld has resulted in a

evo-very different book than might have been-different enough to merit its own title Thadintended to prepare a digest ofEvollttionary BiologJj(Third Edition, 1998), rendered of its

excesses, and while much of the structure and some of the text of this book descend rectly fronl that tome, it became clear that a new book \vas in the making Some topics

di-had to be deleted and many others shortened, while the rapid pace of changeinthe field

required that new topics such as evolutionary genomics be introduced and that almost all

topics be updated

Most importantly, this book is specifically directed toward contemporary

lUldergrad-uates That effort will be most immediately evident in the illustrations, but will also be

found in the text, where, in the interest of accessibility; I have attempted to make points

more explicitly, have (with SOlue reluctance) reduced the quantitative aspects of ow' ence, and have eschevved the Proustian sentences and Ellzabethan constructions "'lith

sci-which I fain would play I hope studentswillenjoy at least some of the results

J have structw'ed this book, like its recent ancestor, to begin with phylogeny as a

fralne-\vork for inferring history, and history as the natural perspective for evolutionary

biol-ogy~aperspective that has (guite recently) become ahnostde rigeurin evolutionary ies and beyond I continue with Inacroevolutionary patterns (which I believe most inh'igues begiIming students), emphasizing the evidence for evolution en route In addi- tion to their jntrinsic interest, the historical patterns should excite in the student questions

stud-about evolutionary processes, the subject of the next nine chapters These chapters

pro-vide the basis for tmderstanding the evolution of life histories, genetic systems, cal interactions, genes and genOines, and development, I then retun1 to macroevoJution, approached as a synthesis of evolutionary process and patteln.

ecologi-TIUs book lacks an explicit chapter on human evolution because Inost of the topics it 'would contain are distributed throughout Instead, the final chapter h'eats what I think are increasingly important, indeed indispensable, topics in an undergraduate course on evo- lution: the evidence for evolution, the nature of science, and the failings of creationism,

These themes recur throughout the book, in1plicitly and occasionally explicitly, but

Tbe-lieve it will be useful to treat them as a coherent whole The final chapter ends on a tive note with a brief survey of some of the social applications of evolutionary biology The ever-quickening pace of research and the variety of novel tec1uuques, especially in

posj-molecular, genomic, and developmental evoJutjonary biology, make it increasingly cult for anyone person to keep abreast of and be capable of evaluating research across the entire field of evolutionary studies, So 1 am very grateful to Scott Edwards (Harvard Uni-

diffi-versity) and John True (State University of New York at Stony Brook) for joining me in

this venhue, and contributing chapters on evolution of genes and genomes (Chapter 19)

and on evolutionary developmental biology (Chapter 20), respectively TIley have brought

to these subjects knowledge and critical understanding well beyond any effort I might

have made.

I am also grateful to the rnany people who have made direct or indirect contributions

to the content and development of this book.]t has profited from my lean1.ing of errors in

its predecessor that ',Verner G Heim, Eric B Knox, Uzi Ritte, and Robert H Tamarin

gen-erously brought tomyattention Many people have prOVided information, references, and

advice, including Michael BeU, Prosanta Chakraborty, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dykhuizen,

Walter Eanes, Brian Farrell, Daniel Fisher, John Fleagle, Daniel Fm\k, Douglas Gill, Philip

Glngerich, David Houle, David Jablonski, Charles Janson, Lacey Knowles, Jeffrey

Levin-ton, David Mindell, Daniel Staebel, Randa II Susman, John TI101npson, Mark U11en, Brian

Verrelli, and Jianzhi Zhang Surely this list is veryincoll1plete, and 1 apologize to those

whose names I have omitted Adam Ehmer helped with preparation of some figures, and

Massimo Pigliucci read and offered very helpful comments on a draft of Chapter 22 I

ap-preciate the contributions of Elizabeth Frieder, Monica Gebel', Matt Gitzendanner,

Ken-neth Gobalet, Mark Kirkpatrick, Sergei Nuzhdin, Ruth Shaw, and William A Woods, ]r.,

who reviewed early outlines and chapter drafts.

r am very grateful to those who provided hospitality and support in Australia,

iJl-eluding Mark Burgman and Pauline Ladiges (University of Melbourne), Ary Hoffmann

(LaTrobe University), and Ross and Ching Crozier (James Cook University); to John and

Gabrielle BarkJa, Jeremy Bmdon, Brad Congdon, Stuart Dashper, Chris Lester, Michael

Mathieson, Susan Myers, Richard Nm.votny, Jan Pawning, Peter Thrall, Jo Wieneke, and

others who helped to make me feel welcome; and to the Fulbright Foundation for

fel-lowship support of my sojourn in Australia I feel a speCial debt of gratitude to tbe h·iends

who sustained me in Ann Arbor, espedally Tom Gazi, Deborah Goldberg, Lacey Knowles,

Josepha Kurdziel, Don Pelz, Josh Rest, Mark Ullen and Gerry Duprey, and John

Vander-meer and lvette Perfecto, and I am grateful to the faculty, students, and staff of the

De-partment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the UniverSity of Michigan for tile

pleas-ure of having been one of their number llllust express heartfelt gratitude to the faculty,

students, and staff of the Deparhllent of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook for their

support and friendship throughout my odyssey

Finally, this book is imlueasurably better than it might have been, thanks to the

won-derfully capable Sinauer team, especially Norma Roche, David McIntyre, Elizabeth

Morales, Jefferson Jolulson, and the amazing Carol Wigg Special thanks to Andy Sinaue,;

who sets the gold standard of quality in publishing, for his continuing faith and support

DOUGLAS] FUTUY~~

STONY BROOK,NEWYORK

DECEMBER2004

PREFACE xiii

To the Student

The great geneticistFran~oisJacob, who won the Nobel Prize in Biology and Medicine fordiscovering mechanismsbywhich gene activity is regulated, wrote in 1973 that "there aremany generalizations in biology, but precious few theories Among these, the theory ofevolution isbyfar the most important, because it draws together frOin tll€ most variedsources a mass of observations which ·would otherwise remain isolated;itunites aU thedisciplines concemed with living beings; it establishes order among the extraordinary va-riety of organisms and closely binds tl1em to the rest of the earth; in short,itprovides acausal explanation of the living world and its heterogeneity."

Jacob clid not himself do research on evolution, but like most thoughtful biologists, herecognized its pivotal importance in the biological sciences Today rrlOlecular biologists,developmental biologists, and genome biologists, as ,·vell as ecologists, behaviorists, an-thropologists, and many psychologists, share Jacob's view Evolution provides an llldis-pensable framev\"ork for lmderstanding phenOlnena ranging from tbe structuse and size

of genomes to many features of human behavior :tvloreover, evolutionary biology is creasingly recognized for its usefulness: in fields as clisparate as public health, agriculture,and computer science, the concepts, lnethods, and data of e'ilOlutionary biology make in-clispensable contributions to both basic and appUed research Any educated person shouldknow something about evolution, and should understand why it matters that evolution

in-be taught in our schools For anyone who en\-'isions a career based in the life v.rhether as physician or as biological researcher-an understanding of evolution is in-dispensable As James VVatson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, wrote, "today, thetheory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundanlentalist minority."The core of evolutionary biology consists of describing and analyzing the history ofevolution and of analyzing its causes and mechanisms The scope of evolutionary biol-ogy is far greater than any other field of biological science, because aU organisms, and alltheir characteristics, are products of a history of evolutionary cllange Because of this enor-mous breadth, courses in evolution generally do not emphasize tIle details of the evolu-tion of particular groups of organisms-tIle 3lnOlll1t of information would be simply over-whelming Rather, evolution courses emphasize the general principles of evolution, thehypotheses about the causes of evolutionary change that apply to Ill0St or all organisms,and the major patterns of change that have characterized many different groups In thisbook, concepts are illustrated \vith examples drmvn from research on a great variety of

sciences-organisn1s, but it is less important to know the details of these examples than to

lU1der-stand how the data obtained in those studies bear on a hypothesis

Determ~ningthe causes and patterns of evolution can be difficult, in part because weoften are attempting to lffiderstand how and why son1ething happenedin the past [n th.is

vay,evolutionary biology differs from most other biological subjects, which deal vvithcurrent characteristics of organisms However, evolutionary biology and other biologicaldisciplines share the fact that we often mllst make inferences about invisible processes orobjects We calUlot see past evolutionary changes in action; but neither can ",,\'e actually

seeDNA repUcate, nor can \·ve see the hormones that we know reguJate grol,.vth and

re-production Rather, we m,l1<e inferences about these thingsby(1) posing inforrned

hy-potheses about what tIleyC1reand how they work, then (2) generating predictions

(mak-ing deductions) from these hypotheses about data that we can actually obtain, and finally

(3) judging the validity of each hypothesis by the match between our observations and

what we expect to see if the hypothesis were true This is the "hypothetico-deductive

method," of which Darwin was one of the first successful exponents, and v"hich is Widely

and powerfully used throughout science

In science, a group of interrelated hypotheses that have been well supported by such

tests, and which together explain a wide range of phenomena or observations, is caJJed a

not mean rnere specu.lation "Theory" is a tenn of honor, reserved for principles such as

quantum theory, atomic theory, or celi theory, that are well supported and provide a broad

framework of explanation The emphasis in your course in evolutionary biology, then,

will probably be on, first, learning the theOly (the principles of evolutionary change that

together explain a vast variety of observations about organisms); and second, on leaming

how to test evolutionary hypotheses with data (the hypothetico-deductive method

ap-plied to questions about what has happened, and how it has happened-whether it be

the history of corn from its wild state to 111ass cultivation, or the development of complex

societies in some insect species, or the spread of human immunodeficiency virus (l-nV)

Many students may find that the emphasis jn studying evolution differs from what

they have experienced in other biology courses [suggest that you pay special attention

to chapters or passages "vhere the ftmdamentaJ principles and methods are introduced,

be sure yOll understand them before moving on, and reread these passages after you have

gone through one or more later chapters.(YOLImay \-"ant to revisit Chapters 2,9,10,and

12-13 in particular.) Be sure to empl,asize tmderstanding, not memorization, and test your

understanding using some of the questions at the end of each chapter or questions that

your instructor assigns I must emphasize that the materialin this book builds

cumula-tively; almost every concept, principle, or major technical term introduced in any

chap-ter is used again in lachap-ter chapchap-ters.YOllvvill need to understand the early chapters just as

thoroughly for your final exam as for a midterm exan1 Evolutionary biology is a unified

whole: just as carbohydrate metabolism and amino acid synthesis cannot be divorced in

biochemistry, so it is for topics as seemingly different as the phylogeny of species and the

theory of genetic drift

1cannot emphasize too strongly thatinevery field of sdence, the unknown greatly

ex-ceeds the known Thousands of research papers on evolutionary topics are published each

year, and ma.ny of them raise new questions even as they attempt to answer old ones No

one, least of all a scientist, should be afraid to sayordon't know" or ''I'm not sure," and

that refrain will sound fairly often in this book To recognjze where our knowledge and

understanding are uncertain or lacking is to see \vhere research may be warranted and

where new research tra.ils might be blazed.I hope that some readers will find evolution

so rich a subject, so intellectually challenging, so fertile i.n insights, and so deep in its

im-plications that they wiJ! adopt evolutionary biology as a career Felix qui potl/it rcmJ11

Evolutionary Biology

B iologists, looking broadly at living things, are

stirred to ask thousands of questions Why do

peacocks have such extravagant feathers? Why

do some parasites attack only a single species of host,

whjJe others can infect many different species? Why

do whales have lungs, and why do snakes lack legs?

Why does one species of ant have a single

chromo-some, whjJe some butterflies have more than 200?

Why do salamanders have more than 10 times as

much DNA as hlUnans, and why does a lily plant have

almost twice as much DNA as a salamander? What

ac-coLmts for the astonishing variety of organisms?

In one of the most breathtaking ideas in the

his-tory of science, Glades Darwin proposed that "all the

orga nic beings which have ever lived on this ea rth have

de-scended from some one primordial form." From this idea,

it follows that every characteristic of every

species-the feaspecies-thers of a peacock, species-the number and sequence of

its genes, the catalytic abiliti.es of its enzymes, the

sh'lIcture of its cells and organs, its physiological

tol-erances and nUh'itional requirements, its life span and

reprod L1ctive system, its capacity for behavior-is the

outcome of an evolutionary history The evolutionary

perspective illuminates every subject in biology, from molecular biology

to ecology Indeed, evolution is the unifiJing theory ofbiologJ) "Nothing i.n

bi-ology makes sense," said the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, "except

in the light of evolution."

The peacock,Pavo cristatus.

The extravagant back feathers, whkh impair this bird's ability

to fly, are among the thousands

of biological curiosities that

evolutionary theory explains.

(Photo© Brian Lightfoot/

Nature Picture Library.)

2 CHAPTER 1

Figure 1.1 A tuberculosis ward at

during 'World W<lr 1 Until recently,

it was thought that antibiotics,

which came into widespread use

after World WM II, had conquered

this devastating bacterial disease.

(Photo courtesy of th.e National

Library of Medicine.)

What Is Evolution?

TIle word evoilltion comes from the Latin evolvere, "tounfold or lU1rOll"-to reveal or

man-ifest hjdden potentialities Today "evolution" has come to mean, simply, "change."Itis

sOlnetinl€S used to describe changes in individual objects such as stars Biological (or

or-ganic) evolution,ho"vevel~ischange in the properties ofgroups oforganisms over the course of

evolution: individual OrganiS111S do not evolve Groups of organisms, which we may call

populations, undergodescent witii modification.Populations may become subdivided, so

that several populations are derived from a coml1lon allcestral population. If different

changes transpire in the several populations, the populations diverge.

TIle changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are passed via the genetic material [rolll one generation to the next Biological evolution may be slight

or substantial: it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportions of

differ-ent forms of a gene within a population to the alterations that led from the earLiest ganjsm to dinosaurs, bees, oaks, and humans.

01'-No more dramatic exmuple of evolution by natLU"al selection can be imagined than that

of today's crisis in antibiotic resistance Before the 1940s, most people in hospital wards

did not have cancer or heart disease TIley suffered fr0111 tuberculosis, pneumonia,

menin-gitis, typhoid fever, syplulis, and many other kinds of bacterial infection-and they hadlittle hope of being cured (Figure 1.1), Infectious bacterial diseases condemned millions

of people in the developed cow1tries to early death Populations in developing countries

bore not only these burdens, but also diseases such as malaria and cholera, even more

heavily than they do today

By the 19605, the medical sihlation had changed dramatically The discovery of tibiotic drugs and subsequent advances in their synthesis led to the conquest of most bac-terial diseases, at least ill developed counh'ies, Most people today think of tuberculosis as

an-the stuff of operas and dense German novels The sexual revolutioninthe 1970s was couraged by the confidence that sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and

en-syphilis were merely a tempora.ry inconvenience that penicillin could cme.ln 1969, theSurgeon General of the U,uted States proclaimed that it was time to "close the book on

infectious diseases."

Or so it seemed Today we confront not only new infectious diseases such as AIDS, but

also a resurgence of old diseases ",rith frightening new faces 111e same bacteria are back,

EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 3

but nowtheyare resistant to penicillin, ampicilhn,erythromycin,vancomycin,

flUOl'O-quinolones-all the weapons that \vere supposed to have vanquished them Almost every

hospital in the world treats casualties in this battle against changing opponents-and

un-intentionally may make those opponents stronger TIley are witnessing, and even

insti-gating, an explosion of evolutionary change (Palurnbi 2001)

patients, is now almost universally resistant to penicillin, ampicillin, and related dTUgS.

Nle-thicillin \,vas developed as an alternative and worked for a fewyears,but many S.nureus

populations became resistant to methicillin, and then to cephalosporins, carbapenelns,

eryth-rolnycin, tetracycline, streptomycin, sul£onamides, and fluoroquinolones Yet another new

dnlg, varicomycin, seemed to have solved the problenl, but it too is becorning Jess effective

Drug-resistant strains ofNeisseria gonorrheae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea, have

steadily i_ncreased inabundance; by 1995, more than 40 percent of the gonorrhea cases

treated i.Jl New York City were resistant to penicillin, tetracycline, or both Many sh·ains of

the pneurnonla bacterium are highly resistant to perJicillin, and some strains of the cholera

bacterium are resistant to a wi.de variety of antibiotics Increasingly abundant sh'ains of the

tuberculosis bacterium and of the malarial organism are resistant to all available dnlgs A

person infected with HIV, the hUlnan in1.ffiunodeficiency virus tliat causes AIDS, often

shows indications of drug-reSistant virus witliin 6 to 12 months after drug treahnent begins

As the use of antibiotics increases, so does the incidence of bacteria that are resistant to

tl,ose antibiotics, so tl,e gains made are almost as quickly lost (Figure 1.2) Why is this

hap-pening? Do the drugs cause drug-resistant mutations in the bacteria's genes? Do the

mu-tations occur e,.ren \·vithout exposure to drugs-are they present in Wi exposed bacterial

populations? How ulany ulutations cause resistance to a drug? How often do they occur?

Do the mutations spread from one bacteduni to another? Are they spread onJy among

bacteria or viruses of the same species, or can they pass between different species? How

is tl,e growth of the organism's population affected by such mutations? Can the evolution

of resistance be prevented by using lower doses of drugs? Higher doses? Combinations

of different drugs? Car1 an individual avoid infection by drug-resistant organisms by

fajth-hilly following a physician's prescription, or will this work only if everyone else is just as

conscien tiOLlS?

The pdnciples and methods of evolutionary biology have proVided some answers to

these questions, and to 111any others that affect society Evolutionary biologists and other

scientistsb~ainedin evolutionaI)' principles have traced the transfer of HIV to humans from

chimpanzees and mangabey monkeys (Gao et aL 1999; Korber etaJ.2000) l1,ey have

shld-ied the evolution of insecticide resistance in disease-carrying and crop-destroying insects

111ey have helped to devise methods of nonchemical pest control and have laid the

foun-dations for transferring genetic resistance to diseases and insects from wild plants to crop

Within 15 years, about 90% I

of the Moraxefla bacteria

tested had evolved 0.9

resistance antibiotic resistance.

in the percentage of resistant isolates of the bacteriumMortlxelln cntnrrhnlisis from middle-ear infections in young children (After

Levin and Anderson 1999.)

4 CHAPTER 1

plants Evolutionary principles and knowledge are being used in bioteclmology to design

ne"v drugs and other usefLll products In computer science and artificial intelligence,

"'evo-lutionary computation" uses principles taken directly from evo"'evo-lutionary theory to solve

mathemalically intractable practical problems, such as constructing complex timetables or

processing radar data (Meagher and Futuyma 2001; BulJ and Wichman 2001)

The importance of evolutionary biology goes far beyond its practical uses, however.

The,"vay we think about ourselves can be profoundly shapedbyan evolutionary

frame-work Hm·\' do \ve account for htunan variatiOll-the fact that aLmost everyone is

genet-ically and phenotypically wuque? Are there human races, and if so, how do they differ, and how and when did tIiey develop? Why does sugar taste good? What accOt.mts for be- havioral differences between men alld women? How did exquisitely complex, useful fea- tures such as our hands and our eyes come to exist? What about apparently useless or even potentially harmful characteristics such our wisdom teeth and appendix? Why does noncoding r apparently useless DNA account for more than 98 percent of the human genome? Why do we age r undergo senescence, and eventually die? \'Vhy are medical re- searchers able to use monkeys, mice r and even fruit flies and yeasts as models for processes in the human body? Such questions a.nd their answers lie in the realm of evo- lutionary biology to which Charles Darwin flung open the door some 150 years ago.

Before Darwin

Darwin's theory of biological evolution is one of the most revolutionary ideas in Western

thought, perhaps rivaled only by Newton's theory of physics.Itprofoundly chalJengedthe prevailing worldview,which had originated largely with Plato and Aristotle Fore-

most in Plato's philosopllY was his concept of theeidos rtile "form" or "idea," a

transcen-dent ideal form imperfectly imitated by its earthly representations For example, the ality-the "essence"-of the true equilateral triangle is ollly imperfectly captured by the

re-h~iallg1eswe drmv or construct, Likewise, horses (or any other species) have an immutable essence, but each individual horse has imperfections In this phiJosophy of essentialism, variation is accidental inlperfection.

Plato's philosophy of essentialism became incorporated into Western philosophylargely through Arlstotle, who developed Plato's concept of immutable essences into thenotion that species have fixed properties Later, Christians interpreted the biblical account

of Genesls literally and concluded that each species had been created individuaJ1y by God

in the same form it has today (This belief is known as "special creation.") Christianthought elaborated on Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, arguing that since existence

is good and God's benevolence is cOlnplete, He must have besto'wed existence on every creature, each ,,"vith a distinct essence, of 'whkh he couJd conceive Because order is supe- rior to disorder r God's creation must follow a plan: specifically, a gradation from inani- mate objects and barely animate forms of life, through plants and invertebrates, up

through ever "higher" forms of ljfe Humankind, which is both physical and spiritual

in nature, fanned the link between animals and angels This "Great Chain of Being," or

change would imply that there had beenimperfectjonin the original creation.

As late as the eighteenth century, the role of natural science was to catalogue and make manifest the plan of creation so that we might appreciate God's wisdom Carolus Lin-

naeus (1707-1778), Wll0 estabUshed the framework of modern classification in hisSystemn

ani-mals, undertaken in the hope of discovering the pattern of the creation Linnaeus fied "rela ted" species into genera, "related" genera into orders, and so on, To hinl, "re_

classi-latedness" meant propinquityinthe Creator's design

Belief in tile literal trUtil of the biblica I story of creation started to give way as a more

ma-terialjst view developed in the seventeenth century, starting with \Jew ton's explanations of physicaJ phenOInena The fowldations for evolutionary thought were laidbyastronomers r

who developed theories of the origin of stars and planets, andbygeologists,\vhoamassed evidence that the Earth had undergone profound changes, that it had been populated by

-EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 5

many creatures novv extinct, and that it "vas very old The geologists James Hutton and

Charles Lyell expounded the principle of uniformitarianism, holding that the same

processes operatedinthe past as in the present, and that ti,e observations of geology should

therefore be explained by causes that we can now observe Darwin \'\'as greatly iJlfluenced

by Lyell's teachings, and he adopted uniforrnitarianism in his thinking about evolution

In the eighteenth century, several French philosophers and naturalists suggested that

species had arisen by natural causes The most signiJicant pre-Darwinian evolutionary

hypothesis, representing the culmination of eighteenth-century evolutionary thought, was

proposed by the Chevalier de Lamarck in hisPhilosophie Zoa/ogique(1809) Lamarck

pro-posed that each species originated individually by spontaneous generation from

non-livingmattel~starting at the bottom of the chain of being A "nervous fluid" acts within

each species, he sRid, causlng it to progress lipthe chain Species origiJ1ated at different

times, so we now see a hierarchy of species because they differ in age (Figure 1.3A)

Lanlarck argued that species diHer from one another because they have different needs,

and so use certain of their organs and appendages more than others The more strongly

exercised organs attract more of the "nervous fluid," which enlarges them, just as

mus-cles become strengthened by work Lamarck, like most people at the time, believed that

sud1 alterations, acquired during an individual's lifetiJne, are inherited-a principle called

inlleritance of acquired characteristics In the most famous example of Lamarck's

the-ory, giraffes originally had short necks, but stretched their necks to reach foliage above

them Hence their necks \overe lengthened; longer necks were inherited, and over the

course of generations, their necks got longer and longer This could happen to any and all

giraffes, so the entire species could have acquired longer necks becauseitwas composed

of individual organisIns that cllanged during their lifetimes (seeFigur~1.4A).

JEAN-BAPTISTE PIERRE ANTOINE DE

MONET, CHEVALIER DE LAMARCK

generation of simplest form

(U) Darwin's lheory

Present

Branches that do not reach the

top represent extinct lineages.

Figure 1.3 (A) Lamarck's theory of organic progression.Over titTle, species originatebyspontaneous generation, andeach evolves up the scale of organization, establlshing ascnla

simple forms of life to older, more complex forms.Inck's scheme, species have not originated from common ances-tors.(B) Darwin's theory of descent ,·vith modification, repre-sentedbya phylogenetic tree Lineages (species) descend fromcommon ancestors, undergoing various modificationsin thecourse of time Some (such as the leftmost lineages) mayundergo less modification from the ancestral condition thanothers (the rightmost lineages) (A after 8m·vler 1989.)

Lamar-Tick marks indicate evolutionary modifications.

of all species in tree

6 CHAPTER 1

CHARLES ROBERT OARWIN

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

Lalnarck's ideas had little impact during his lifetime, partly because they were

criti-cized by respected zoologists, and partly because after the French Revolution, ideas

is-suing fron1 France were considered suspect in most otller cOlmtries Lamarck's ideas of how evolution works were "'.'rang, but he deserves credit for being the first to advance

a coherent theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darv\lin (Febmary 12, 1809-ApriJ 19, 1882) was the son of an English cian He briefly studied medicine at Edinburgh, then turned to studying for a career inthe clergy at Cambridge University He apparently believed in the literal truth of the Bible

physi-as a young man He wphysi-as pphysi-assionately interested in natlual history and became a panion of the natural scientists on the faculty His life was forever changed in 1831, when

com-he was i.llvited to serve as a nahlralist on the H.M.S. Beagle,a ship the British navy was sending to chart the waters ofSouth Anlerica

TheBeagle'svoyage lasted from December 27, 1831 to October 2, 1836 The ship spent

severa.! years traveling along the coast of South America, where Danvin observed the

nat-ural history of the Brazilian rain forest and the Argentine pampas, and stopped in theGalapagos Islands (on the Eguator off the coast of Ecuador).Inthe com-se of the voyage,

Dan-vi.n became an accomplished naturalist, collected specimens, made umumerable

ge-ological and bige-ological observations, and conceived a new (and correct) theory of the mation of coral atolls Soon after his rerum, the ornithologist John Gould pointed out thatDarwin's specimens of mockingbirds from the Galapagos [slands were so different from

for-one island to another that they represented different species Danvin then recalled that

the giant tortoises, too, differed from one island to the next These facts, and the

similar-ities between fossil and liVUlg mammals that he had found in South America, triggered his conviction that different species had evolved from common ancestors.

Darwin's comfortable finances enabled him to devote the rest of his life exclusively to

his biological work (although he was chronicallyill for most of his life after the voyage)

He set about anlassulg evidence of evolution and trying to conceive of its causes On

Sep-tember 28, 1838, he read an essay by the economist Thomas Malthus, who argued that the

rate of human population growth is greater than the rate of increase in the food supply,

so that unchecked growth must lead to famine This was the inspiration for Darwin's greatidea, one of the most important ideas in the history of thought: natural selection Darwinwrote in his autobiography that "being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for ex-

istence which ever)'\vhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of mals and plants, it at once struck me that tmder these circumstances favourable variations

ani-would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed." In other words, if

individuals of a species with superior feahues survived and reproduced more

success-fully than individuals with inferior feahJres, and if these differences were inherited, theaverage character of the species would be altered

Mindful of how controversial the subject would be, Darwin then spent hventy yearsamassing evidence about evolution and plll'suing other researches before publishing hisideas He wrote a private essay in 1844, and in 1856 he finally began a book he intended

to callNatural Selection.He never completed it, for in JW1e 1858 he received a manuscriptfrom a yOlmg naturalist, AIfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) Wallace, who was collectingspecimens in the Malay Ardlipelago, had independently conceived of natural selection Dar-

win had extracts from his 1844 essay presented orally, along with VVallace's manuscript,

at a meetulg of the Inajor scientific society in London, and set about writing an "abstract"

of tl1e book he had intended The 490-page "abstract," titled0"Tile Origil1 of Species by Means

of Natural Selection, or The Preservation ofFavoured Races in Ihe Slmggle for Life,was published

on November 24,1859; it instantly made Darwin botl1 a celebrity and a figure of controversy

For the rest of his Ufe, Darwin continued to read and correspond on an immense range

of subjects, to revise The Origin o{Species(it had six editions), to perform experiments ofaLl sorts (especially on plants), and to publisb many more articles and books, of which The

Descent of lV1an is the lTIOst renowned Darwin's books reveal an irrepressibly inquisitive

EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 7

man, fascinated with all of biology,creativeindevising hypotheses and in bringing

evi-dence to bear upon them, and profoundly mvare that every fact of biology, no matter how

seemingly trivial, mustfitinto a coherent, unified tmderstanding of the \vorld

Darwin's Evolutionary Theory

modification Jt holds that all species, liviJ1g and extinct, have descended, without

inter-ruption, from one or a few original forms of life (Figure] 3B) Species that diverged from

a common ancestor were at first very SiJl1ilar, but accumulated differences over great spans

of time, so that some are now radically different from onearlother Darwin's conception

of the course of evolution is profoundly different fromLamarck's,inwhich the concept

of common ancestry plays almost no role,

The second theme ofTile Origin a/Speciesis Darwin's theory of~lecausal agents of

evo-lutionary change This was his theory of natural selection: "if variations useful to any

01'-gan ic being everOCClu~assuredly individuals thus characterised wiJJ have the best chance

of being preserved in the struggle for IHe; and from the strong principle of inheritance,

these will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised Tb.is principle of

preserva-tion, or the survival of the fittest,Ihave called natural selection." This theory is a

VARIA-TIONAL THEORYof change, differing profOlmdl)' from Lamarck'sTRANSFORMATIONAL

THE-ORY, in ""hich individual organisIns change (Figure 1.4)

Birth (B)

o

o

o

o

o

o

-

-

- -.

-

- - CD - -.

Generation 3 B RA Generation 2 Transformational evolution Generation I Reproductive age (RAJ B o - 0

o - 0

o - 0

o - 0

0 - 0

0 - 0

Time -~

Variational evolution Generation 1 Reproductive B;,th (II) age (RA) o - 0

-~­ • J::~ ~.

-" -_:::_-~

-o o • • -B o - 0

o - 0

",,-,," "-~. .," ; -• '<

~ _.~::~ -

-Generation 2 RA B Generation 3 itA - •

-Time -~

Figure 1.4 A diagrammatic contrast between transformational and variational theories of

evolutionary change, shown across three generations \lVithin each generation; individuals are

represented earlier and later in their lives The individuals in the left column in each generation

are the offspring of those in the right column of the preceding generation In transformational

evolution, individuals arc altered during their li.fetimes; and their progeny are born with these

alterat"ions In variational evolution, hereditarily different forms at the beginning of the history

are not transformed, but instead differ in survival and reproductive rate; so that their

propor-tions change from one generation to another

8 CHAPTER 1

What is often called "Darwin's theOly of evolution" actually includes five theories(Mayr 1982a):

or-ganisms change over rune This idea was not original with Darwin, but it was win who so convinciJ1gly Inarshaled the evidence for evolution that most biologists soon accepted that it has indeed occurred.

had proposed (see Figure 1.3).Danvinwas the first to argue that species had verged from common ancestors and that all of life could be portrayed as one greatfami! y tree

dif-ferent organisms have evolved incrementally, by small steps through intermediateforms The alternative hypothesis is dlat large differencesevolve by leaps, orSALTA-

characteris-tics (see Figure 1.4B) 11,jS concept was a completely original idea that contrastsboth with the sudden origin of new species by saltation and with Lamarck's ac-

cotmt of evolutionary change by transformation of individuals.

Wallace, that changes in the proportions of different types of individuals are caused

by differences in their ability to survive and reproduce-and that such changes sult in the evolution of adaptations, features that appear "designed" to fit organ-

re-isms to their environment The concept of naturalselectjonrevolutionized not only

biology, but Western thought as a whole

Darwin proposed that the various descendants of a common ancestor evolve different features because they are adaptive under different "conditions of life"-different habitats

or habits Moreover, the pressure of competition favors the use of different foods or

habi-tats by different species He believed that no matter how extensively a species has

di-verged from itsancestol~new hereditary variations continue to arise, so that given enough

time, there is no evident lirnit to the amount of divergence that can occur

liVhere, though, do dlese hereditary variations come from? This was the great gap inDarwul's dleory, and he never £illed it The problem was serious, because according to theprevailing belief inBLENDING INHERITANCE,variation should decrease, not increase Because

offspring are often intermediate between their parents in features such as color or size, it

was widely believed that characteristics are inherited like fluids, such as different colors

of paint Blendulg white and black paints produces gray, but mixing two gray paints n't yield black or white: variation decreases Darwin never knew that Gregor Mendel had

does-Ul fact solved the problem in a paper published in 1865 <lendel's theory ofPARnCUL~TE

INHERITANCEproposed that inheritance is based not on blending fluids, but on particles

that pass unaltered from generation to generation -so that variation can persist The

con-cept of "mutation" in such particles (later called genes) developed only after 1900 and wasnot clarified wltil considerably later

Evolutionary Theories after Darwin

AlthoughThe Origill of Species raised enormous controversy, by the 1870s most tists accepted the hjstorical reality of evolution by common descent There ensued, inthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a "golden age" of paleontology, com-parative morphology, and comparative embryology, during which a great deal of in-

scien-formation on evolution in the fossil record and on relationships among organisms was amassed But this consensus did not extend to Darwin's theory of the calise of evolu-

tion, natmal selection For about 60 years after the publication ofTile Origin a/Species,

all but a few faithhd Darwinians rejected natural selection, and numerous theories were

proposed in its stead These theories i rlcluded neo-lmnarckian, orthogenetic, and

ll1U-tationist theories (Bowler 1989)

NED-LAMARCKISMincludes several theories based on the old idea of inlleritculce of

mod-ifications acquired during an organism's lifetime Such modmod-ifications might have been

due, for example, to the direct effect of the environnlent on developlnent (as in plants that

develop thicker leaves if grownina hot, dry environnlent).Ina fan10us experilnent,

Au-gust Weismann cut off the tails of mice for many generations and showed that this had

no effect on the tail length of their descendants Extensive subseguent research has

pro-vided no evidence that specific hereditary changes can be induced by environnlental

con-ditions lmder whicll they would be advantageous

Theories ofORTHOCENESlS,or "straight-line evolution," held that tIle variation that ari.ses

is directed toward fixed goals, so that a species evolves in a predetermined direction

with-out the aid of natural selection Some paleontologists held that such trends need not be

adaptive and could even drive species toward extinction None of the proponents of

or-thogenesis ever proposed a mecbanislTI for it

MUTATIONISTtlleories were advanced by SODle geneticists who observed tbat

dis-cretely different new phenotypes can arise by a process of mutation They supposed that

such mutant forms constituted ne,v species, and thus believed that natural selection was

not necessary to account for the origin of species Mutationist ideas were advanced by

Hugo de Vries, one of the biologists who "discovered" Mendel's neglected paper in

1900, and by Thomas Hunt Morgan, the founder ofDrosophilagenetics The last

influ-ential mutationist was Richard Goldschmidt (1940), an accomplished geneticist who

nevertheless erroneously argued that evolutionary change within species is entirely

dif-ferent in kind from the origin of ne"" species mId higher taxa These, he said, originate

by sudden, drastic changes that reorganize the whole genollle Although most such

re-organizabons would be deleterious, a few "lwpeful monsters" would be the

progeni-tors of new groups

The Evolutionary Synthesis

These anti-Darwinian ideas were refuted in the 1930s and 1940s by the evolutionary

syn-thesis ormodenl synsyn-thesis, forged from the contributions of geneticists, systematists, and

paleontologists who reconciled Danvin's theory with the facts of genetics (Mayr and

Provine 1980; Smocovitis 1996) Ronald A Fisher and John B S Haldane in England and

Sewall Wright in the United States developed a mathematical theory of population

ge-netics, which showed that mutation mId natural selectiontogethercause adaptive

evolu-tion: mutation lS not an alternative to natural selection! but is rather its raw material The

study of genetic variation and changeinnahu'al populations was pioneered inRussia by

Sergei Cbetverikov and continued by Theodosius Dobzhansky, who moved from Russia

to tbe United States Inhis influential book Genelics and Iile Origin of Species (1937),

Dobzhansky conveyed the ideas of the population geneticists to other biologists, thus

in-fluencillg their appreciation of the genetic basis of evolution

Other major contributors to the synthesis induded the zoologists ErnstMaYl~in

Sys-tell/atics ond tile Origin of Species(1942), and Bernhard Rensd), inEvalntion Above tile Species

Level(1959); the botanlst G Ledyard Stebbins, inVariation and Evolulian in Plants (1950);

and the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, inTell/po Dud Mode in Evolution (1944)

and itssuccessOl~Tlte Major Fentures of Evolution(1953).These auUlOrs argued persuasively

that mutation, reconlbinatiol1, natural selection, and otl1er processes operatingwitltin

species (which Dobzhansky termed microevolution) account for theorigin of /leW species

and for tile major, long-terll/ features of evoilltion (termed macroevolution)

Fundamental principles of evolution

The principal claims of the evolutionary synthesis are the foundations of modern

evo-lutionary biology Although some of these principles have been extended, clarified, or

modified since the19405,most evolutionary biologists today accept theln as

RONALD A FISHER

J B.S HALDANE

SEWALL WRIGHT

10 CHAPTER 1

ERNST MAYR G LEDYARD STEBBINS, GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON, AND THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY

tally valid These, then, are the fundamental principles of evolution, to be discussed atlength throughout this book

1 The phenotype(observed characteristic) isdifferellt from the gellotype(the set of genes

in an individual's DNA); phenotypic differences among individual organisms may

be due partly to genetic differences and partly to direct effects of the environment

2 Environmental effects on an individual's phenotype do not affect the genes passed

on to its offspring.[n other "vards,acquired cl1l1mcteristics nre not il1lterited.

3 Hereditary variations are based on particles-gelles-thatretail1their identityasthey

pass throllgh the generations; they do lIotvlendwith other genes 111is is true of bothdiscretely varyingh"alts(e.g., brown vs blue eyes)andcontinuously varying traits(e.g., body size, intensity of pigmentation) Genetic variation in continuously vary-ing traHs is based on several or many discrete, particulate genes, each of which af-fects the trait slightly ("polygenic inheritance")

4 Genes mutate, usually at a fairly low fate, to equally stable altemative forols,knolvvn asalleles.The phenotypic effect of such mutations can range from unde-tectable to very great The variation that arises by mutation is amplifiedbyrecom-bination among alleles at different loci

5 Evollitionary c!langeisa populational process: it entails, in its most basic form, achangeinthe relative abundances (proportionsorfrequencies)of individual organ-isms witll different genotypes (hence, often, with different phenotypes) within apopulation One genotype may gradually replace other genotypes over the course

of generations Replacelnent may occur within only certain populations, or in allthe populations that make up a species

6 The rate of mutation is too low for mutation by itself to shift a population from onegenotype to another Instead, tIle change in genotype proportions within a popula-tion can occur by either ofhvoprincipal processes: random fluctuations in propor-tions (genetic drift), or nonrandom changes due to the superior survival and/or re-production ofSOlU€genotypes compared with others (Le., natural selection)

Natural selection and random genetic drift can operate simultaneously

7 Even a slight intensity of natlu·al selection can (under certain circumstances) bringabout substantial evolutional"y change in a realistic amow1t of time.Natural selection enll aCCOl/llt for both slight nl/d great differences a/llong species,as well as for the earlieststages of evolution of ne\'\' traits Adaptations are traits that have been shaped by

natural selection

8 Natural selection can alter populations beyond the original range of variationby

increasing the frequency of alleles that,byrecombination \vith other genes that fect the saine trait, give rise to new phenotypes

af-9 Natural populations are genetically variable r and so can often evolve rapidly when

envirorunental conditions change.

10 Populations of a species in different geographic regions differ in characteristics that

have a genetic basis.

11 TI,e differences between different species, and between different populations of the

same species, are often based on differences at several or nlany genes, many of

which have a small phenotypic effect This pattern supports the hypothesis that the

differences between species evolve by rather small steps.

12 Differences alll0ng geographic populations of a species are often adaptive, and thus

are the consequence of natural selection.

13 Phenotypically different genotypes are often found in a single interbreeding

popu-lation Species are not defined simply by phenotypic differences Rather, different

species represent distinct "gene pools"; tl1at is, species are groups of interbreeding

or potentially interbreeding individuals that do not exchange genes wiili oilier such

groups

14 Speciation is the origin of hvo or lnore species from a single common ancestor

Spe-ciation usually occurs by the genetic differentiation of geographically segregated

populations Because of the geographic segregation, interbreeding does not prevent

incipient genetic differences from developing.

15 Among living organisms, there are many gradations in phenotypic characteristics

among species assigned to the same genus, to different genera, and to different

families or other higher taxa Such observations provide evidence that higher taxa

arise by the prolonged, sequential accumulation of small differences, rather ilian by

the sudden lTIutational origin of drastically new "types."

16 The fossil record includes many gaps among quite different kinds of organisms Sucl1

gaps may be explained by the incompleteness of the fossil record But the fossil

record also includes exanlples of gradations from apparently ancestral organisins to

guite different descendants TI,ese data support the hypothesis tl1at the evolution of

large differences proceeds incrementally Hence the principles that explain the

evolu-tion of populaevolu-tions and species may be extrapolated to the evoluevolu-tion of higher taxa

Evolutionary Biology since the Synthesis

Since the evolutionary synthesis r a great deal of research has elaborated and tested its

ba-sic principles Begiru1ing in the 1950s and accelerating since r advances in genetics and

1110-Jecular biology have virtually revolutionized the study of evolution and have opened

en-tirely new research areas, such as molecular evolution Molecular biology has provided

tools for stud ying a vast nmnber of evolutionary topics, such as mutation r genetic

vari-ation, species differences, development, and the phylogenetic history of life

Since the mid-1960s, evolutionary theory has expanded into areas such as ecology,

an-imal behavior, and reproductive biology, and detailed theories have been developed to

explain the evolution of particular kinds of characteristics such as life span r ecological

dis-tribution, and social behavior The study of macroevolution has been renewed by

provoca-tive interpretations of the fossil record and by new methods for studyu1g phylogenetic

re-lationships As molecular methods have become more sophisticated and available,

virtually new fields of evolutionary study have developed Among these fields is

MOLEC-ULAR EVOLUT10N(analyses of the processes and history of change in genes), U1 which the

hypothe-sis, developed especially by Motoo Kimura(1924 1994),holds that most of the evolution

of DNA sequences occurs by genetic drift rather than by nah.ual selection EVOLUTIONARY

developmen-tal processes both evolve and constrain evolution It is closely tied to developmendevelopmen-tal

bi-ology, one of the most rapidly moving fields of biology today EVOLUTlONARY GENOMlCS,

concerned with vaTiation and evolution in nlultiple genes or even entire genomes, is

be-ing born The advances in these fields r though, are complemented by vigorous research,

new discoveries, and new ideas about long-standing topics in evolutionary biology, such

MOTOO KIMURA

to replace a static conception of the world-one virtually identical to theCreator~sperfectcreation-with a \vorld of ceaselessChaJlge.Itwas Darwin who extended to living things,including the hunlan species, the principle that change, not stasis, is the natural order.Above all, Darwin's theory of random, purposeless variation acted onbyblind, pur-poseless natural selection provided a revolutionary new kind of aI1S\Ver to almost aU ques-tions that begin with "Why?" Before Darwin, both philosophers and people in generalans\·vered U\Nhy?" questions by citing purpose Since only an intelligent mind, with thecapacity for forethought, can have purpose, questions such as "\lVllY do plants have flow-ers?" or "Why are there apple trees?" or diseases, or earthquakes-were answeredby

imagining the possible purpose that God could have had in creating them Tills kind ofexplanation was made completely superfluous by DanNin's theory of natural selection.The adaptations of organisnls-Iong cited as the most conspicuolls evidence of intelligentdesign in the universe-could be explai.ned by purely mechanistic causes For evolution-ary biologists, the flower of a nlagnolia has ajuI/cfion,but not apurpose.It was not de-signed i.n order to propagate the species, mllch less to delight us \vith itsbeauty~but in-stead Call)e into existence because magnolias 'with brightly colored flowers reproducedmore prolifically than magnolias with less brightly colored flowers The unsettling im-plication of this purely material explanation is that, except in the case of human behav-ior, \-ve need not invoke, nor can we find any evidence for, any design, goal, or purposeanywhere in the natural world

It must be emphas.ized that all of science has come to adopt the way of thought thatDarwin applied to biology Astronomers do not seek the purpose of cornets or supenlovas,nor chemists the purpose of hydrogen bonds The concept of purpose plays no partinsci-entific explanation

Ethics, Religion, and Evolution

In the 'world of science, the reality of evolution has not been in doubt for more than a dred years, but evolution remains an exceediJlgly controversial subjectinthe United Statesand some other countries The creationist movement opposes the teaching of evolution

hWl-in public schools, or at least demands "equal time" for creationist beliefs SUdl oppositionarises from the fear that evolutionary science denies the existence of God, and conse-quently, that it denies any basis for rules of moral or ethical conduct

Our knowledge of the hjstory and mechanisms of evolution is certainly incompatiblewith a liternlreading of the creation stories in the Bible's Book of Genesis, asitis incom-patible with hW1dreds of other creation myths that people have devised A literal reading

of some passages in the Bible is also incompatible with phYSiCS, geology, and other ral sciences But does eva] lItionary biology deny the existence of a supernatural being or

natu-a hunlnatu-an soul? No, becnatu-ause science, induding evolutionnatu-ary biology, is silent on such tions.Byits very nature, science can entertain and investigate only hypotheses about ma-terial causes that operate \vith at least probabilistic regularity: Itcannot test hypothesesabout supernatural beings or their intervention in natuJ'al events

ques-Evolutionary biology has provided natural, material causes for the diversification andadaptation of species, just as the physical sciences did when they explained earthquakesand eclipses The steady expansion of the sciences, to be sure, has left less and less to beexplained by the existence of a supernatural creator, but science can neither deny nor af-firm SUcJl a being Indeed, some evoJutionary biologists are devoutly religious, and many

nonscientists, including many priests, Ininisters, and rabbis, hold both religious beliefs

and belief inevolution

Wherever ethical and moral principles are to be found, itis probably notLIlscience, and

surely not in evolutionary biology Opponents of evolution have charged that evolution

bynatural selection justifies the principle that "might makes right," and certainly more

than one dictator or imperialist has i.nvoked the "lav"" of natural selection to justify

atroc-ities But evolutionary theory cannot provide any such precept for behavior Like any

other science, it describes how the world is, not how itshould be.The supposition that what

is "natural" is "good" is called by philosophers theNATURALISTIC FALLACY.

Various animals have evolved behaviors that we give names such as cooperation,

monogamy, competition, infanticide, and the like Whether or not these behaviors ought

to be, and whether or not they are moral, is not a scientific question The natural world is

amoral-it lacks morality altogether Despite this, the concepts of natural selection and

evolutionary progress were taken as a "law of nature" by which tv[arx justified class

strug-gle, by which the Social Darwinjsts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

justified economic competition and imperialism, and by 'which the biologist Julian

Hux-ley justified hLUl1anitarianism (Hofstadter 1955; Paradis and Williams 1989) All U,ese ideas

are philosophically uldefensible instances of the naturalistic fallacy Infanticide by lions

and langur IUOll.keys does not justify it in hwnans, and evolution provides no basis for

hurnan ethics

Evolution as Fact and Theory

Is evolution a fact, a Uleory, or a hypothesis? Biologists often speak of the "theory of

evo-lution," but they usually mean by that somethin.g quite different from what nonscientists

understand by that phrase

In science, a hypothesis is an infonned conjecture or statement of what might be true

A hypothesis may be poorly supported, especially at first, but it can gain support, to the

point at which it is effectively a fact For Copernicus, the revolution of the Earth around

the Sun was a hypothesis "vith modest support; for LIS,it is a hypothesis with such strong

support that we consider it a fact Most philosophers (and scientists) hold that we do not

know anything with absolute certainty What we call facts are hypotheses that have

ac-quired so much supporting evidence that we act as if they were hue

tn everyday use, a "theory" is an unsupported speculation Like many words,

how-ever, this term has a different meaning in science A scientific theory is a mature,

coher-ent body of interconnected statemcoher-ents, based on reasoning and evidence, that explain a

variety of observations Or, to quote theOxford Ellglish DicJiollary,a theory is "a scheme

or system of ideas and statements held as an explanation or aCCowlt of a group of facts or

phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or

ex-periment, and is propoLUlded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement

of what are known to be the generalla\.vs, principles, or causes of something known or

observed." Thus atomic theory, quantum theory, and the theory of plate tectonics are

elab-orate schemes of interconnected ideas, strongly suppOl·ted by evidence, that aCcotmt for

a great variety of phenomena

Given these definitions, evolution is a fact Buttlie fact of evol"tioll is explained

byevo-lutionary theory.

have descended, with modification, from common ancestors; and that the chief cause of

modification is natural selection actulg on hereditary variation Danvul provided

abWl-dant evidence for descent with modification, and hundreds of thousands of observations

from paleontology, geographic distributions of species, comparative anatomy,

embryol-ogy, genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology have confirmed this hypothesis since

Darwin's tLtne.T11USthe hypothesis of descent with modification from common ancestors

has'ong had the status of a scientific fact

The explanation of how modification occurs and flOWancestors give rise to diverse

de-scendants constitutes the theory of evolution We now know that Dan"in's hypoUlesis of

14 CHAPTER 1

nahl.rat selection on hereditary variation\Alascorrect, but we also know that there arefil0re

causes of evolution than Dar"vin realized, and that natural selection and hereditary ation themselves are more cOlnplex than he imaguled A body of ideas about the causes

vari-of evolution, includinglTIutatiOl1,recombination, gene flow, isolation, random geneticdrift the manyfOtTI15of natural selection, and other factors, constitute our current theory

of evolution, or "evolutionary theory." Like all theoriesinscience, H is incomplete, for we

do not yet knO'w the causes ofallof evolution, and some details may turn out to be 'wrong.Bllt the main tenets of the theory are well supported, and most biologists accept them withconfidence

3 Darwin's hypothesis that all species have descended with modification from commonancestors is supported by so much evidence that it has become as well established a fact asany in biology Hjs theory of natural selection as the chief cause of evolution \'\'as not broad-

ly supported until the "evolutionary synthesis" that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s

4 The evolutionary theory developed during and since the evolutionary synthesis consists of

a body of principles that explain evolutionary change Among these principles are (a) thatgenetic variation in phenotypic characters arises by random rnutation and recombination;(b) that changes in the proportions of alleles and genotypes \'vithin a population may result

in replacement of genotypes over generations; (c) that such changes in the proportions ofgenotypes may occur either by random fluctuations (genetic drift) or by nonrandom, con-sistent differences among genotypes in survival or reproduction rates (natural selection);and (d) that due to different histories of genetic drift and natural selection, populations of aspecies may diverge and become reproductively isolated species

5 Evolutionary biology makes importc1l1t contributions to other biological disciplines and tosocial concerns in areas such as medicine, agricultuTe, computer science, and our under-standing of ourselves

6 The implications of D(JHvin's theory, \·vhich revolutionized \,\Iestern thought, include theideas that change rather than stasis is the natural order; that biologicaJ phenomena, includ-ing those seemingly designed, can be explained by purely material causes rather than bydivine creation; and that no evidence for purpose or goals can be found in the living world,other than in human actions

7 Like other sciences, evolutionary biology C31mot be llsed tojustif~ybeliefs about ethics ormorality Nor can it prove or disprove theological issues such as the existence of a deity.Many people hold that, although evolution is incompatible with a literal interpretation ofsome passages in the Bible, it is compatible with religious belief

Terms and Concepts

adaptation

creationist movement descent with modification essentialism

evolution (biological evolution;

organic evolution) evolutionary synthesis

theory

uniformitarianism

Suggestions for Further Reading

TIre renilings at the cud of each chapter inc/II de major wOl'ks tlrat provide a

compre-hensive tl'cntl1lcnt nud(111eutry into the professiollal liternfllre. The refercnces cited

within the text also serve this important !ll1lctioll.

No one should fail to read at least part of Darwin'sThe origill oj species by me0l15 of lIa/llrnl selection,

ortile prescl1JotiOI/ offavoured races ill tile struggle for life;perhaps the Sixth Edition (1872) is best

to read After sorne adjustment to Viclorian prose, you should be entl1Talledbythe craft, detail,

c0111pleteness,and insightinDarwin'sa rgUlTlcnts.It is anastonishing book

Among the best biographies of Darwin are Janet Brmvne's superb two-volume \·vork,CJ/(/rles

respec-tively); and Darwin,byA.Desmond andJ.Moore ('"'Varner Books,Ne\NYork,1991),\-vh.ich

em-phasizes the role played by the religious, philosophical, and intellectual climate of

nineteeth-centtuy England on the development of his scientific theories See also P.J.Bowler,

Charles Darwill: The mal/alld his influellce(Blackwell Scien\"ific, Cambridge, UK,1990),which

em-phasizes scientific issues, andJ.Bowlby,Cltnrlcs DarIvilJ: A biogmpJIY(W.W Norton, New York,

1991),which emphasizes Darwin's personal life

Important works on the history of evolutionary biology include P.J.Bowler,Evo/Illio//: The (,is/ory

of all idea(University of California Press, Berkeley,1989);E MayT,The growth of biological tllOlIg!Jf:

Diversity, evoilltioll, fllld inheritallce (Harvard 'University Press, Cambridge, MA,1982,a detailed,

cOJ1"lprehensive history of systematics, evolutionary biology, and genetics that bears the

per-son."l1 stan1p of one of the major figures in the evolutionary synthesis); and E MayI' and W B

Provine (eds.),Tile evolutionary syllthesis: Perspectives all the IIII/ficntion of biology (Harvard

Uni-versity Press, Cambridge, MA,1980),whid1 contains essays by historians and biologists,

in-cluding some of the major contributors to the synthesis

Recent books that expose the fallacies of creationism and explain the nature of science and of

evo-lutionary biology include R.1 Pennock,TO'1oer of Babel: The evirieHce agaillst the New

CreatioJ/-ism (M.l.T Press, Cambridge, ivlA,1999);B.J.Alters and S M Alters,Defellding euolll/ion: A gllide

to the creation/eVa/II! iOIl controversy (Jones and Ba rtlett, Sudbury, MA, 2001); and M Pigli ucd,

Dell}/illg C"vollli iO/l: CreationisHI, scientisl/I, and tlte natllre of science (Sinauer Associates, Stmderland,

MA,2002)

Problems and Discussion Topics

1. How does evolution unify the biological sciences? What other principles might do so?

2 Discuss how a creationist versus an evolutionary biologist might explain some human

char-acteristics, and the implications of their differences Sample characteristics: eyes; ,,, isdom

teeth; individually unique friction ridges (fingerprints); five digits rather thaJ1 some other

number; susceptibility to infections; fever when infected; variation in sexual orientation;

limited life span

3 Analyze and evaluate Ralph Waldo Emerson's couplet,

Striving to be man, the worm

Mounts through all the spires of form

What pre-Darwinian concepts does it express? What fault in it wiU a Darwinian find?

4 In February 2001, it '·"as announced that two research groups had effectively completed

sequencing the entire human genome If humans, along v"ith Cll! other forms of life, have

evolved from a common ancestor, ,""hat evidence of this would be expected in the human

genome? In what ways might the history and processes of evolution help us interpret and

make sense of genomic sequence data?

5 How might the evolution of antibiotic resistcmce in pClthogenic bacteria be slowed dmvn or

prevented? What might you need to know in order to achieve this aim?

6 Should both evolution and creationism be taught as alternative theories in science classes?

7 Based on sources available in a good library, discuss how the "Darwinian revolution"

affect-ed one of the foUmving fields: philosophy, literature, psychology, anthropology

The Tree of Life:

Classification and Phylogeny

ago, a bacteritun, not

un-like the Escherichia coli

bacteria in our intestines,

took up residence within

the cell of another

bacteria-like organism This partnership

f1ourislled, since each parhler

evi-dently provided biochemical

services to the other The "host"

in this parhlership developed a

modern nucleus, chromosomes,

and mitotic spindle, while the

"guest" bacterium within it

evolved into the mitochondrion.

This ancestral eukaryote gave rise

to diverse one-ceJJed descendants Some of those descendants later

became multicellular when the celis they produced by mitosis remained

together and evolved mechanisms of regulating gene expression that

enabled groups of cens to form different tissues and organs One such

lineage became the progenitor of green plants, another of the fWlgi and

animals.

Between about 1000 million and 600 million years ago, a single animal

species gave rise to two species that became the progenitors of two quite

astonishingly different groups of aninlals: one evolved into the starfishes,

sea urchins, and other echinoderms, and the other into the chordates,

including the vertebrates Most of the species derived from the earliest

How do we classify

organ-isms? Although it lacks legs, thjs anirnal is not a snake but a lizard-the eastern glass lizard,

abollt SO species of glass lizard (family Anguidae), many of which do have legs The groove along the side of the

body is a feature of this family.

Snakes have very different scales, skulls, and other inter-

nal features (Photo © John

Cancellosi/ AGE Fotostock.)

18 CHAPTER 2

Figure 2.1 TIle Tree of Life This

estimate of the relationships among

some of the major branches is

based mostly on DNA sequences,

especially those of genes encoding

ribosomal RNA Of the three

empires of life, AtThaea and

Eucarya appear to ha\'e the most

recent common ancestor TIle

majority of taxa in the tree are

uni-cellular (After Baldauf et al 2004.)

vertebrate are fishes, but one would prove to be the ancestor of the tetrapods (four-leggedvertebrates) About 150 million years after the first land-dwelling tetrapod evolved, some

of its descendants stood on the brink of mam1l1alhood About another 125 million yearslater, the mammals had diversified into many groups, including the first prilnates,adapted to lifein trees Some primates became small, some evolved prehensile tails, andone became the ancestor of large, tailless apes About ]4millionyears ago, one such apegave rise to the Asian orangutan on the one hand and an African descendant on the other.The African descendant split into the gorilla and another species About 6 to 8 millionyearsago f that species, in turn, divided into one lineage that became today's chimpanzeesand into another lineage that lmderwent rapid evolution of its posture, feet, hands, andbrain: our own quite recent ancestor

This lS our best current understanding of some of the high POlllts in our history, inwhich, metaphorically speaking, the human species developed as one nvig in a gigantictree, the great Tree of Life (We will look at this history in more detail in Chapters 5 and7.) With the passage of time, a species is likely to "branch"-to give rise to two speciesthat evolve different modifications of some of their features Those species branchin turn,and their descendants may be altered further still By this process of brandlillg and mod-ification, repeated innumerable times over the course of many millions of years, manymillions of kinds of organiSlTIS have evolved from a single ancestral organism at the verybase, or root, of the h'ee (Figure 2.1)

THE TREE OF LIFE: CLASSIFICATION AND PHYLOGENY 19

Evolutionary biologists have developed methods of "reconstructing" or "assembling"

the tree of llie of estimating the phylogenetic, or genealogical, relationships among

or-ganisms (i.e., which species share a recent common ancestor, which share nlore distant

ancestors, and \vhkh share even more distant ancestors) The resulting portrayal of

re-lationships not only is fascinating in itself (have you ever thought of yourself as related

to a starfish, a butterfly, a mushroom?) but is also an important foundation for

under-standing many aspects of evolutionary history, such as the patlnvaysbywhich various

characteristics have evolved

Wecarulot directly observe evolutionary hjstory, so we must inferitusi.ng deductive

logic, like Sherlock Holmes reconstructing the history of a crime A few points U1 our brief

sketch of human origins, such as the timing of certain events, have been learned from the

fossiJ record However, most of this history has been determined from studyu1g not

fos-sils, but liVing organisIns.Inthis chapter, we will become acquainted with some of the

methods by which we can infer phylogenetic relationships, and we 'will see how our

un-derstanding of those relationships is reflected in the classification of organisms In the

fol-lowing chapter, we will examine some common evolutionary patterns that these

ap-proaches have helped to elucidate

Classification

Phylogenetic analysis-the study of relationships among species-has historically been

closely associated with the classification and naming of organisms (knov.rn asTAXONOMY).

Both are among the tasks of the field ofSYSTEMATICS.

In the early 1700s, European naturalists believed that God must have created species

according to sonte ordered scheme, as we saw in Chapter1.Itwas therefore a work of

de-votion to discover "the plan of creation" by cataloging the works of the Creator and

dis-coveri.ng a "natural," true, classification The scheme of classification that was adopted

then, and is still used today, was developedby the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus

(1707-1778) Linnaeus introduced BINOMIAL NOMENCLATURE,a system of two-part names

consisting of a genus name and a specific epithet (such asHomo sapiens). He proposed a

system of grouping species in aHIERARCHICAL CLASSIFICATIONof groups nested within

larger groups (such as genera nested within families) (Box A) The levels of classification,

such as kingdom, phylLUTI, class, order, family, genus, and species, are referred to as

tax-onomic categories, 'whereas a particular group of organisms assigned to a categorical rank

is a taxon (pi mal: taxa) Thus the rheslls monkey is placed m the genusMncncn,mthe

fam-ilyCercopithecidae, in the order Primates;Macaca,Cercopithecidae, and Primates are taxa

that exemplify the taxonomic categories genus, family, and order, respectively Several

"intermediate" taxonomic categories, such asSUPERFNvULYandSUBSPEOES,are sometiJl1es

used in addition to the lltore familiar and universal ones In assigning species to higher

taxa (those above the species level), Linnaeus used features that he imagined represented

propinquity m God's creative scheme For example, he defined the order Prm1ates by the

features "four parallel upper front [mcisor] teeth; two pectoral nipples." But without an

evolutionary framework, naturalists had 110objective basis for classifying mammals by

their teeth rather than by, say, their color or size

Classification took on an entirely different significance afterThe Origin afSpecies was

published in 1859 In the Galapagos [slands, as we saw in Chapter 1, Darwin had

ob-served that different islands harbored similar, but nevertheless distinguishable,

mock-ingbirds He came to suspect that the different forms of mockingbirds had descended from

a single ancestor, acquirmg sHght differences in the course of descent But this thought,

logically extended, suggested that that ancestor itself had been modified from an

ances-tor further backin time, which couJdhavegiven rise to yet oUler descendants-various

South American mockingbirds, for instance By thjs logic, some remote ancestor might

have been the progenitor of aU species of birds, and a stil.l more relnote ancestor the

pro-genitor of aU vertebrates

DanvLn proposed, then, that on occasion, an ancestral species may split intonNO

de-scendant species, which at first are very similar to ead1 other, but 'which diverge (become

20 CHAPTER 2

BOX2A Taxonomic Practice and Nomenclature

Standardized names for organisms

are essential for communication

among scientists To ensure that

names are standardized, taxonomy has

developed rules of procedLU'e

Most species are named by

taxono-mists who are experts on that particular

group of organisrns A ne"v species may

be one that has never been seen before

(e.g., an organism dredged lrom the

deep sea), but many unnamed species

are sitting in museum collections,

awaiting description Moreover, a

sin-gle species often proves, on closer

ShIdy, to be h 'o or more very similar

species A taxonomist who wldertakes a

REVISION-a comprehensive

analysis-of a group frequently names new

species A species name has legal

stand-ingifitis published in a journal, or

evenina privately produced

publica-tion that is publicly available

The name of a species consists of its

genus and its specific epithet; both are

Latin or latinized ,"vords These words

are alwaysitalicized(or underlined),

and the genus is always capitalized In

entomology and certain other fields, it

is customary to include the name of the

AUTHOR (the person who conferred the

specific epithet); for example, the corn

rootworm beetleDiabroticn vil-g/fern

LeConte

Numerous rules govern the

con-struction of species names (e.g., genus

and specific epithet must agree in

gen-der:Rnttus l1orvegiclIs,notRattus

norvegica,for the brown rat).Itis

reCOln-mended that the name have meaning

[e.g., Verlllfvorn("worm eater")

chrysoptem("golden-winged ") lor the

golden-winged warbler;Raila

warsche-witschii,"vVarschewitsch's frog"], but itneed not Often a taxonomist'will honoranother person by naming a species af-ter him or her

The first rule of J10lnenclature is that

no two species of animals, or of plants,can bear the same name.(Itis pennissi-ble, however, for the same name to beapplied to both a plant and an animalgenus; for example,Alsophilais thename of both a fern genus and a mothgenus.) The second 1S the rule of PRIOR-ITY: the valid name of a taxon is the old-est available name that has been ap-plied to it Thus it sOllletimes happensthat tvvo authors independently de-scribe the same species under differentnames; in this case, the valid nameis

the older one, aIld the younger l1aIlle is

a junior SYNONYM.Conversel)'~ it Inayturn out that hoVO or more species havemasqueraded tmder one name; in thiscase, the name is applied to the speciesthat the author used in his or her de-scription To prevent the obvious ambi-guity that could arise in this way, it hasbecome standard practice for the author

to designate a Single specimen (the T'rT'ESPECIMEN, or HOLOTYPE) as the "name-bearer" so tha t 1a tel' workers can deter-mine which of several siinilar speciesrightfuJly bears the name The holo-type, usually accompanied by otherspecimens(PARATYPES) that exemplifythe rallge of variation, is deposited andcarefully preserved in a museum orherbariunl

Tnrevising a genus, a taxonomist aUy introduces changes in the taxonomy

usu-Some examples of such changes are:

• Species that were placed by previousauthorsindifferent genera may be

brought together in the same genusbecause they are shmvn to be closely

related These species retain theirspecific epithets, butifthey areshifted to a different genus, the au-

thor's name is vnittenin

parenthe-ses

• Aspecies maybe removed from a

genus and placed in a differentgenus becauseitis determined not to

be closely related to the other bers

mem-• Forms originally described as ent species may prove to be the samespecies, and be synonymized

differ-• New species may be described

TIle rules for naming higher taxa arenot all as strict as those for species andgenera In zoology (and increasinglyin

botanyL names of subfamilies, families,and sometimes orders are formed fromthe stem of the type genus (the firstgenus described) Most family names ofplants endin-aceae.Inzoology, sub-family names endin-inae and familynanlesin-idae.TIlliSMilS(from theLatinmus, muris,"mouse"), the genus ofthe house mouse, is the type genus ofthe family Muridae and the subfamilyMurinae; Rosa(rose) is the type genus ofthe family Rosaceae Endings for cate-gories nbove family are standardizedin

some, but not all, groups (e.g., -formesfor orders of birds, such as Passeri-formes, the perching birds that include

Passer,the house sparrows) Names oftaxa above the genus level are not itali-cized, but are ahl/ays capitalized Adjec-tives or colloquial nouns formed fromthese names are not capitalized: thus wemay refer to murids or to murid ro-dents, without capitalization

more different) in the course of time Each of those species, in turn, may divide and diverge

to yield two descendant species, and the process Inay be repeated again and againthro'ughout the inunensely long history of life Danvin therefore gave meaning to the no-tion of "closely related" species: they are descended from a relatively recentconunon an-cestor, \ hereas lnore distantly related species are descended from a more remote (I.e" fur-

ther backintime) COmJll0n ancestor The features tbat species hold in COllllTIOn, such as thevertebrae thatallvertebrates possess, \,vere not independently bestowed on each of thosespecies by a Creator, but were inherited from the ancestral species in which the featuresfirst evolved With breathtaking daring, Darwin ventured that all species of organisms,in

all their amazing diversity, had descended by endless repetition of such events, throughlong ages, from perhaps only one COIll.lllon ancestor-the universal ancestor of al.llife

THE TREE OF LIFE: CLASSIFICATION AND PHYLOGENY 21

\~

v

IV

III II

InDarwin's words, aU species,extant andextinct, form a great "Tree of Life," or

phy-logenetic tree, in wh.ich closely adjacent twigs represent living species derived only

re-cently from their conUTIon ancestors, whereas twigs on different branches represent

species derived from more ancient common ancestors (Figure 2.2) He expressed this

metaphor in some of h.is most poetic language:

The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great

tree I believe this simile largely speaks the truth The green and budding twigs may

repre-sent existing species; and those produced during former years may reprerepre-sent the long

suc-cession of extinct species At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to

branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the

same manner as species and groups of species have at all times overmastered other species

in the great battle for life The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and

lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was young, budding twigs; and this

connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the

classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups Of the many

twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into

great branches yet survive and bear the other branches; so with the species which lived

dur-ing long-past geological periods, very few have left livdur-ing and modified descendants From

the very first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and

these fallen branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and gen~

era which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only in a fossil

state As we here and there see a thin, straggling branch springing from a fork low down in

a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we

occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren,* which in some small

degree connectsbyits affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been

saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station As buds give rise by

1i\'-illg Itmgfishcs, a group that is closely related to the ancestor of the tetrapod (four-legged) vertebrates, and

which is known from ancient fossils.

Figure2.2 Darwin's tion of hypothetical phylogeneticrelationships, showing hm\' lineag-

representa-es diverge from common ancrepresenta-estorsand give rise to both extinct andextant species Time intervals(between Roman nwnerals) repre-sent thousands of generations Dar-win omitted the details of branch-

ing for intervals X through XlV

Extant species (at time XIV) can betraced to ancestors A, F, and I; aUother original lineages have becomeextinct Distance along the horizon-tal axis represents degree of di\'er-gence (as, for example, in bodyform) Dan\'in recognized that rates

of evolution vary greatly, showing

this by different angles in the

dia-gram; for instance, the lineage fromancestor F has survived essentially

unchanged (From Darwin 1859.)

22 CHAPTER 2

Figure 2.3 Giant tortoises from

the different islands of the

Galapa-gos archipelago differinthe form of

their shells and the length of their

necks, but they are members of the

same species(Geocheloue

hoodensis) from Espanola (formerly

Hood) Island (8) Dome-shelled

tor-toise(G.e vandenbllrghi) from

Isabela Island (Photos©Fran<;ois

Gohier/Photo Researchers, Inc.)

growth to fresh buds, and these,ifvigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a

fee-bler branch, so by generationIbelieve it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with

its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its branching and beautiful ramifications.

ever-Under Darv,rin's hypothesis of conunon descent, a hierard1ical classi.fication reflects a realhistorical process that has produced organ.is1l1s with true genealogical relationships, close

or distantinvarying degree Different generainthe same family share fewer [sties than do species within the same genus because ead1 has departed further from theirlnore relnote COInmon ancestor; different fa milies within an order stem from a still moreremote ancestor and retain still fewer characteristicsinCOll1ll1011 Classification, then, canportray, to some degTee, the renl history of f?Vo}utiOJ1.

character-Inferring Phylogenetic History

Similarity and common ancestry

[fDarwin's postulate that species becotne steadily luore different fralll one anotherisrect, then we should be able to infer the history of branching that gave rise to differenttaxa by measuring their degree of sinUlarity or difference We will first examine how thismethod of inferring evolutionary history worksina si.mple case, and then consider someimportant complications

cor-Consider tIle cIlaracteristics of an organisln -or characters, as they are usually that may differ among organisll1s For example, the several kinds of tortoises Danvin en-countered in the Galapagos Islands differ in features such as body size, neck length, andshell shape (Figure 2.3) Phenotypic characters that have proved useful for phylogeneticanalyses of various organisms have included not only external and internal morpholog-ical features, but also differences in behavior, cell structure, biochemistry, and chromo-some structure Today, armed with the knowledge and techniques of molecular biology,biologists often use DNA sequences, in which the identity of the nucleotide base(A,T, C,

called-or G) at a particular site in the sequence may be considered a character Each charactercan have different possible character states: the nucleotide A versus C, short versus long

neck, rounded versus saddle-shaped shell

As a first step, let us look at a group of four species(1 4)with

10 variable cl1aracters of interest (a-j) Our task is to determinevvhich of the species are derived from recent, and which fromn10re ancient, common ancestors 111at is, we wish to arrange

them into a phylogenetic tree such as that in Figme 2.4A, in

which each branch point(NODE)represents the common tor of the two lineages For simplicity, let us suppose that eachcharacter can have two states, labeled 0 and 1, and thatais theancestral state, found in the common ancestor (Ancl) of thegroup State 1isa derived state-that is, a state that has evolvedfrom the ancestral state (For example, the ancestral state Amight be replaced by the derived state C, or the ancestral statered eyes bythederived state yellow eyes, during the evolution

ances-of one or more descendant taxa.) The Greek-derived adjectivesPLESIOMORPHJCand APOMORPI-llCare often used for "ancestral"and "derived," respectively We use such data on characterstates to infer the phylogenetic relationships among the species.Figure 2.4A portrays a hypothetical phylogeny in which fomspecies descend frOll1 the ancestor 1 Each evolutionary change,such as evolution from character stateClOto character state aI' is

indicated by a tick Inark along the branch in which it occurs Werefer to the set of species derived from anyone common ances-tor as a monophyletic group Thus Figure 2.4A shows lhree

THE TREE OF LIFE CLASSIFICATION AND PHYLOGENY 23

monophyletic groups: species 2+3, species 1+2+3, and species 1+2+3+4 Suppose

that Figure 2.4A does indeed represent the h·ue phylogeny of the four species; can \ve

in-fer, or estimate, this phylogeny from the data?

V\'e may calculate the similarity of each pair of descendant species as the number of

character states they share Species 1 and 2, for example, both have character states30'bO'

(\Jand jOI as tallied inthe matrix of shared character states in Figure 2.4A In this

exam-ple, species 2 and 3 are most similar, and evolved frorn the most recent common ancestor

(ancestor3).Species 1 is moreSiJl1ilarto species 2 and species 3, \·vith whichitshares the

common ancestor (ancestor2),thanitis to species 4, with wh ich the entire group (species

1-3) shares the mostremote common ancestor (ancestor 1) In this example, the degree of

similarity is a reliable index of recency of conunon ancesh'Y, and it enables us to infer the

monophyletic groups-that is, the phylogen), of these species

In this hypothetical case, we suppose that we knO\.\, which character states are

ances-tral and which are derived VVhen we measured similarity, we COWl ted both the shared

characters that did not evolve during the cmcestry of any two species (e.g., the ancestral

state21 shared by species] and 2) and the shared characters that did evolve (c1in this

in-stance) If we count only the sharedderivedcharacter states-those that did evolve-"we

obtain another rnatrix, in which, again, species 2 and 3 are rnost similar, and species 1 is

more similar to them than to species 4 Shared derived character states are sometimes

called s)'napomorphies

Complications in inferring phylogeny

In Figure 2.4A, the number of character state changes is roughly tIle same from the

an-cestor of the group (anan-cestor 1) to each descendant species Thatis, the rate of evolution

is about equal among the lineages lllis need not be the case, however In Figure 2.4B, we

assume that the rate of evolution behveen ancestor 3 and species 2 is greater than

else-where in the phylogeny Perhaps this difference represents nlore base pair substitutions

in a DNA sequence in species 2 than in the others.* The mah'ix of shared character states

now indicates that species 1 and 3 are most similar \tVe might therefore be misled into

thinking that the)' are the most closely related species, although the)' are not (Remember,

degree of relationsllip means relative recency of common ancestry, not similarity.)Intllis

case, similarity is notalladequate indicator of relationship But the nunlber of shared

accurately indicates phylogeny Why the difference?

Species 1 and 3 share not on.ly one derived character state (c1),but also six ancestral

character states (210, bo' gO' ho' io' jo)' Because species 2 underwent four evolutionary

changes (to g1' h.J1 il ,andh) that species 3 does not share, it is less sinlilar to species 3 than

species 1 is, even though it is more closely related Taxa may be similar because they share

ancestral character states or derived character states, butonly tire derived character states

Illnl are shared among taxa(i.e., synapomorphies)indicale JllOnophyletic groupsand enable us

to infer the phylogeny successfully By the same token, derived character states that are

restricted to a single lineage, sometimes called autapolllorphies (such as statej\ in species

3), do not provide any evidence about its reJationship to other lineages

111the previous exalllples, each character changed only once across the whole phylogeny

Hence all the taxa shari.ng a character state inherited it without change from their common

ancestor Such a character state is sajd to be homologous inallthe taxa that share it (Note

that we may speak of both homologous character states and homologolls characters.)

Again, this need not be the case A character state is homoplasiousifit has lndependently

evolved hvo or more nnles, and so does not have a unique origin TIle taxa that share such

a character have not all inheriteditfrom their common ancestor Figure 2AC shows three

homoplasious characters State gt has independently evolved from go i.n species1and 3,

and \;\,\;I.uo;\ndependentty evolved in species1and 2 TheselWOhomoplasies are exalnples

"A b~sc pJir SUBSTIl1JTJO/\, is the replacement of one nucleotide b"se pair (e.g., A-T) by the another (e.g.,

G-C) in an entire population or species Such substitutions sometimes, but notalways, change the amino

acid specified by genetic code, as explained detail in Chapter

Shared derived character slates

abcdefghij

Species 4 (outgrollp)

2 3 4 Shared character stales

Shared derived c1nmctcr slates

- 3 7 6 rSpecies 1 and 3

- 6 I l share the most

character states

- 5

I 2 3 4 but species 2 and

I I 0 3 share the most

- 3 0 states, and thus are

- 0 1the most closely

related.

3

2

2 3

Phylogenetic trees may

be arranged with the stem, or root, at the bottom, side or top of the figure; the choice is made on the basis of preference, clarity, and convenience.

I 2 3 4 I

g3 4 0

2 - 5 0

THE TREE OF LIFE: CLASSIFICATION AND PHYLOGENY 25

Figure 2.4 An example of phylogenetic analysis applied to three data sets.Ineach h"ce,

species 1-4 are shm-vn at the top of the tree and their common ancestor at the bottom The

char-acter state(0or1)for each of ten characters (a-j) is 5110"vl1 for Ancestor 1 and the extant species

The labeled tick marks along the branches show evolutionary changes in character states To

the right of each tree, the upper matrixshmvs the total llUlnber of character states shared

between each pair of species, and the Imver matrix shows the number of shared derived

charac-ter states, as impliedbystate changes along the branches (A) A tree with relatively constant

evolutionary rates and no homoplasy (B) The fate of evolution is faster in one branch (Ancestor

3to species2)than in other branches.(C)Three characters are homoplasious: character statesgl

and hI both independently evolved t\ \'ice, and characterjunderwent evolutionary reversal,

fromilbackto the ancestral statej{] In all these cases, \·ve assume that species 4 is an

"Ol1t-grol1p"-i.e., it is more distantly related to the other species than they are to one another

Each of these characters evolved

Figure 2.5 A phylogeny01some

groups of vertebrates, showingmonophyletic groups (tetrapods,amniotes, birds) whose membersshare derived character states thatevolved only once

of convergent evolution, the independent origin of a derived dlaracter stateintwo or more

taxa Conversely, character j has evolved from jo to jl in the evolution of the ancestor 2, and

then has Lmdergone evolutionary reversal to jo in species 2

Homoplasious characters-those that undergo convergent evolution or evolutionary

reversal-provide misleading evidence about phylogeny Tn Figure 2.4C, characters g

and j\,\'ould both lead us to m istake species 1 and 3 for the closest relatives; character

h erroneously suggests that species 1 and 2 are a monophyletic group Thus shared

de-rived character states are valid evidence of monophyletic groups onlyifthey areuniqllely

derived

Many systematists trace the modern practice of inferring phylogenetic relationships

to the German entomologist Willi Hennig (1966) Hennig pointed out that taxa may be

sim-iJar because they share(1)unjquely derived character states, (2) ancestral dlaracter states,

or (3) homoplasious character states, and that only the similarity due to lIJliquely derived

character states provides evidence for the nested monophyletic groups that make up a

phy-logenetic tree Thus, for example, we believe that the tetrapod limb, the allUlion, and the

feather each evolved only once VVe conclude thatallteh'apods (vertebrates with fOLU·limbs

rather than fillS) form a single monophyletic group (Figure 2.5) Within the tetrapods, the

amniotes form a monophyletic group Among the atnniotes,* all feather-bearing aninlals

(birds) are, again, a single monophyletic group Howevet; this does not

mean that all vertebrates without feathers form a single branch, and

in-deed they do not The lack of feathersisan ancestral character state that

does not provide evidence that featherless animals are all more closely

related to one another than to birds (Fishes, lizards, and frogs all lack

feathers, but so, after all, do all invertebrates.)

The method of maximum parsimony

Hennig's principle, that uniquely derived character states define

monophyletic groups, poses two difficulties: First, how can we tell

which state of a character is derived? Second, how can we tell \vhether

itis uniquely derived or homoplasious? For OLLr hypothetical

phylo-genies in Figure 2.4, we were free to dictate that state 0 was ancestral

and that KI evolved twice In real life, we are not given such

in£ol111a-tion-we have to determine it sOITlehow.ftmight be supposed that the

fossil recordwould tellLISwhat the ancestor's characteristics were, but

as we will see, tl1e relationships alnong fossils and living species have

to be interpreted, just like those among living species alone Besides,

the great majority of organisms have a very incomplete fossiJ record,

as we will see inChapter 4

*Amniotes are those vertebrates-reptiles, birds, and mammals -<:haracterized by a

major adaptation for life on land; the amniotic egg, v"ith its tough shell, protectiye

embryonic membranes (chorion and amnion), and a membranous sac (aUantois) for

storing embryonic \vaste products.

the dorsal fin.

(8) Accepted phrlogeny Character key:

6 Single aonic arch

Figure 2.6 T,,,'o possible

hypotheses for the phylogenetic

relationships of vvhales.(A)A

hypothetical phylogeny postulating

a close relationship bet\,veen VI/hales

and fishes such as tuna, basedon

the shared dorsal fin (B) The

accepted phylogeny, in \'\'hich

,,,,,hales are most closely related to

other manumds Tick marks show

the changesinseveral characters

that are impliedbyeach phylogeny

Characters 2-5 are considered

wuquely derived synapomorphies

of tetrapods, and 6-9 the same for

mammals The accepted phylogeny

requires fel,.ver evolutionary

d,anges than the phylogeny in (A),

andistherefore a more

parsimo-nioushypothesis

Some of the methods devised to deal with these problems depend on the concept ofparsimony Parsimony is the principle, dating at least from the fourteenth century, thatthe simplest explanation, requiring the fe\ovest undoClffi1ented assumptions, should bepreferred over more cOJuplicated hypotheses that require more assumptions for wh.ichevidence is lacking The method based on parsimony is among the simplest methods ofphylogenetic analysis, and is one of the most widely used

Inphylogenetic analysis, the principle of parsilnony suggests that among the variousphylogenetic trees that can be imagined for a group of taxa,the best estimate of tile tme p/lJj-

ex-ample, we postulate that vI/hales and fishes such as tt.ma form a monophyletic group cause they have a dorsal fin, and thatall the other creatures \ve call mammals formanother monophyletic group (Figure 2.6A) nus phylogeny would require us to postulate(on the basis of no evidence) that many features shared by ,""hales and other mammals(e.g., four-chambered heart, milk, a single aortic arch), as well as many features shared bywhales and other tetrapods such as lizards (e.g., tetrapod limb structure, lungs), eachevolved hvice In contrast,ifwe postulate that wbales are descended fronl the same an-cestor as other Iuammals, then each of these features evolved once, and only the dorsalfin (and a few other features such as body shape) evolved twice (Figure 2.6B) TI,e "ex-tra" evolutionary changes we must postulate ill a proposed phylogeny are homoplasiouschanges: those that \·ve must suppose occwTed more than once TIlliS parsimony holdsthattlie /Jest plIylogenetic hypothesisisthe one that requiresliSto postu!nte the fewest hOI1lOpln-

be-sioHschanges.

Suppose we 'wish to deternline the relationships an\Ong species1,2, and 3 We are quitesure that they fonn a ll10nophyletic group relative to taxa 4 and 5, \vhich we are confidentare successively more distantly related These distantly related taxa are called outgroups,relative to the ingroup, tile monophyletic set of species whose relationships we wish toinfer (In our example, species1,2, and 3 might be species of primates, 4 might be a ro-dent, and 5 might be a marsupial sucll as a kangaroo From extensive prior evidence, weare confident that rodents and marsupials are l1lore distantly related to the primates thantbe various primates are to one another.) As Figure 2.7 sho'ws, there are three possiblebranching relationships (trees 1-3) among the three [ngroup species: the closest relativesmight be species 1 and 2, 1 and 3, or 2 and 3 The data matrixinthe figure shows the nu-cleotide bases at seven sites in a homologous DNA sequence from each species

THE TREE OF LIFE: CLASSIFICATION AND PHYLOGENY 'XI

Our task is to determine which tree structure implies thesnlallest number of

evolu-tionary changes in the characters We go about this byplotting, on each tree, the position

at which each character must have changed, minimizing the number of state changes

Consider tree 1, and examine first the variation i.n characternamong species The simplest

explanation for the fact that species 1, 2, and 3 share state A and species 4 and 5 share state

Cis that C was replacedbyA in the common ancestor of the ingroup; that singledlange

divides the tree into species with A and species \vith C We infer that the change was from

C to A, rather than vice versa, because if A had been the ancestral character state, hvo

in-dependent changes from A to C in the evolution of species 4 and 5 would have to be

pos-tulated This pattern \vould not be parsiInonious

Following the same procedure for each character individually, we find that tree1

re-quires us to plot evolutionary change in characters c and d i.n the ancestor of species 1 and

2, providing evidence that they are sister groups (groups derived from a com_mon

an-cestor that is not shared \-vith any other groups) Character e must be convergent,

evolv-ing twice from T to A;ifthis tree is the true branching history, there is no wayinwhich it

could have changed only once and yet have the same state in species 1 and 3 Characters

fand g are autapornorphies, changil1g only in the individual species 3 and 5, respectively

They have exactly the same positions in the other possible phylogenetic trees and carry

no information about branching sequence

The same procedme is then foHowed for every other possible phylogeny (This very

te-dious procedure is carried out by computer programs in real phylogenetic analyses, which

typically involve more species and many more characters.) The topology of tree 2 implies

that character e is not homoplasiolls, but evolved from T to Aintile common ancestor of

species1and 3, which are sister taxa in this tree However, both characters c and d must

have evolved convergently in this case Tree 3 Likewise implies that characters c and d

evolved convergently, and that character e underwent evolutionary reversal from T to

A and back toT

If, having completed this procedure for aU three possible branching trees, we count the

number of character state changes (tlle "lengtll" of each tree), we find that tree 1 is

short-est, requiring the fewest character state changes Moreover, more dlaracters support the

monophyly of species 1 and 2 (tree 1) than of 1 and 3 or of 2 and 3 According to the

par-simony criterion, tree 1 is ourbestestil1lfiteof the history of branching (the "true tree") 1n

any real case, of course, we would want the difference in length between the most

par-simonjolls tree and other possible trees to be lllud1 greater before '.>ve would have

confi-de~y.'\.our estimate

The method of maximum parsimony just described is not the only method for

infer-ring phylogenetic relationships, and although it is the easiest method to describe and one

of the simplest to use, it is generally not the most reliable Several other commonly llsed

methods are mentioned in Box B

Figure2.7 Lnferring a phylogeny

by the lnethod of maximum mony The matrix gives the charac-ter stCltes (nucleotide bases)forseven sites (a-g) inaDNAsequence Oneach ofthe tlu'ec treesrepresenting possible relationshipsamong species 1, 2, and 3, the [OCCl-tions of c11Clnges to derived chClJ'ClC-ter stCltes are shown VVhen the

parsi-lengths(L)of theUueetrees are

compared, we see that tree 1istheshortest(L = 8); thatis,it requires

LISto postulClte the fe"vest characterchanges

28 CHAPTER 2

BOX2B More Phylogenetic Methods

Many methods have been

pro-posed for inlerring

phyloge-rLies, and their strengths and

drawbacks have been extensively

ar-gued and analyzed (Felsenstein 20M)

Some are "algorithmic" methods that

calculate a single tree from the data

Among these, theNEIGHBOR-JOINING

METHOD,which does not assume equal

rates ofDNAsequence evolution among

lineages, is the most frequently used

Most practitioners, hO\>\'ever, prefer

"tree seardling" methods that cornpare

a large sample of trees from among the

huge number that are possible for even a

few taxa These methods use various

computerized "seardl" routines to

maxi-mize the chance offindingthe shortest

trees that are compatible \'\Iith the data

Some tree-seardling programs, such

as those based on maximum parsimony,

savemanyof the trees that are

exam-ined, so that the shortest tree fou.nd can

be compared with those that are nearly

as short We are then interested in

knm· ,ingifthe shortest tree (or

particu-lar groupings within it)isreliable, or if

it differs fronl other short b:ees only bychance This statistical problem is oftenaddressed by a procedure caUedBOOT- STRAPPL\JG,in which many randon) sub-sanlples of the characters (e.g., nu-cleotide sites) are used for repeatedphyJogenetic anaJyses.Ow'confidence

in the reliability of a particular grouping

is greaterifthis grouping is consistentlyfound by using these different data sets(bootstrap samples) A group of three ormore taxa \vhose relationships cannot

be confidently resolvedisolten sented by a node with three or morebranches-aPOLYTO"·fY A CONSENSUS TREEis one that portrays both the rela-tionshipsinwhich we can be confidentand the polytomies that represent "un_

repre-resolved" relationships

Some po\verful, increasingly populartree-searching methods are the,\;IAXI-

MUM LIKELIHOOD(ML) andBAYESI.'N

methods They are too complicated toexplai11 hereindetail Both use a model

of the evolution of the data (usually

DNAsequences).Forexample, themodel might assume that all nucleotidesubstitutions are equally likely and that

aconstant substitution rate can be mated from the data (the "one-parame-ter model"), or it might assume that dif-ferent kinds of substitutions occur at

esti-diJferentcharacteristic rates ("Kimura'stwo-parameter model") Given themodel and a possible tree, themaxi-mum likelihood method calculatesthe

likeW,ood of observing the data Thebest estimate of tl,e phylogeny is theb:ee that maximizes this likelihood Themore recently developed, and increas-ingly popular, Bayesian method differs

from the maximwn likelihood method

by maximizing the probability01serving a particular tree,giventhemodel and tl,e data (Note the seem-ingly subtle, but nevertheless very im-

ob-portant, difference.) Unlike tl,e MLmethod, the Bayesianmethodprovidesand calculates the probabilities of a set

of treessothat theycan becompared(Huelsenbeck et a!' 2001)

TABLE2.1 Divergence between nucleotide

sequences of the '¥'l-globin pseudogene

among orangutan (Pongo), gorilla (Gorilla),

chimpanzee (pan), and human (Homo)a

SOl/ree: Data from Bailey et al 1991.

llThe percentage of di\'ergence between Iwo human sequences

is given in the lov;er right cell Divergences betweenHomoand

other species are calculated Llsing the average of these two

sequences Values are not corrected for multiple substitutions.

Homo

3.301.691.560.38

An example of phylogenetic analysis

tn traditional classifications, the primate superfamily Hominoidea consists of three ilies: tbe gibbons (Hylobatidae), the human family (Hominidae), and the great apes(Pongidae) The great apes are tl,e orangutan(Pollgo PlJgllIaeus)in southeastern Asia; thegorilla (Gorilla gorilla) in Alrica; and two species of chimpanzees(Pall),alsoinAfrica.From anatomical evidence, it has long been accepted that the Hominoidea is a mono-phyletic group, and that the Hylobatidae are more distantly related to the other species

fam-than those speciesare to one another.

Pbysically,POllgO, Pall,and Gorillaappear more like one anotherthan Uke Homo (Figure 2.8) I-Ience the traditional view was thatPongidae is monophyletic and thatHOIlIObrancbed off first Howevet;molecular data have definitively shO\vll that humans and chim-panzees are each other's closest relatives (Ruvolo 1997) Among the

l11anyDNA analyses leading tothis conclusion is a study by MorrisGoodman and his coworkers (Goodman et aI 19B9; Bailey et al 1991),who sequenced more tl,an 10,000 base pairs01a segment01DNA thatincludes a hemoglobin rSEUDOGENE-a nonfunctional DNA sequencederived earlyinprimate evolution by duplication of a hemoglobingene (see Chapter 8) The outgroups used were theNew World spi-

der monkey,Ateles, a distant relative of the Hominoidea, and the Old

World rhesus monkey,Macaca,Wllich belongs to a more closely relatedfamily (Cercopithecidae)

Goodman and colleagues found that the percentage of sequenceidentity in the 'JIll-globin pseudogene between pairs01hominoids is