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The Tree of Life: A Phylogenetic Classification

Article  in  Systematic Biology · August 2007

DOI: 10.1080/10635150701475605

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 696 SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY VOL. 56
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basic things like input and output of phylogenetic data, exceeds the cost of learning a program like PAUP*, but
or even less basic things like defining models of DNA the long-term benefits are also likely to be greater—and
substitution. As an algorithm developer, working in R the more people that get involved in doing phylogenetics
is likely to speed up your ability to turn an idea for an in R, then the more modules will become available. So
algorithm into something that can be used by others. The overcome that activation-energy hump, buy the book,
corollary of this is that R has the potential to be very good and get involved!
for practitioners in that, once they have learned to navi-
gate the R environment, they get great flexibility and ac- Barbara R. Holland, Institute of Fundamental Sciences, Massey Univer-
cess to an ever-increasing number of specialist packages. sity, Private Bag 11222, Palmerston North 5301, New Zealand; E-mail:
Certainly, the cost in time of learning a language like R [email protected]

Syst. Biol. 56(4):696–698, 2007

Copyright ! c Society of Systematic Biologists
ISSN: 1063-5157 print / 1076-836X online
DOI: 10.1080/10635150701475605

The Tree of Life: A Phylogenetic Classification.—Guillaume Lecointre is arranged as a set of nested clades, with each section
and Hervé Le Guyader. (Illustrated by Dominique Visset, translated introduced by a tree along with a list of synapomorphies.
by Karen McCoy.) 2006. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, The clades within that tree then follow on the subsequent
Cambridge MA. 560 pp. ISBN 978-0-674-02183-9 (ISBN-10 0-674-02183- pages, presented in the same manner, until the limit of
5). US$39.95, 34, £25.95 (hardback). resolution of the book is reached. All of the putatively
monophyletic groups are numbered, for ease of locating
As the book review editor, it is obvious that I would them within the book, and almost all of them are named.
request from the publisher a copy of any book with this Paraphyly and polyphyly are strictly excluded, no matter
title, with the intention of then sending it on to a reviewer. how familiar the names of such groups might be.
However, I just couldn’t make myself do it in this case—I This book thus demonstrates the art of making some-
loved the book too much to be able to part with it. So, I thing very difficult look surprisingly easy. This is not
am writing the review myself, and all of you will have a feature of all books, because it requires great exper-
to buy your own copies. tise from the authors, but it would surely be a useful
There are, of course, a number of books around that synapomorphy if we could achieve it. In this case, the
try to provide an overview of biodiversity, listing the straightforward arrangement, the simple writing style
different taxonomic groups, along with an illustrated de- (translated well) and the direct presentation of phylo-
scription of their distinguishing features, the best known genetic information all make the book accessible to the
being that of Margulis and Schwarz (1997). If nothing reader, both expert and non-expert alike. In short, the
else, all introductory biology textbooks also do this, al- book is unique. It not only represents the first thor-
though they never seem to present the other parts of ough attempt to portray life from a purely phylogenetic
biology in the same style. This is a poor way to explain perspective, it is an excellent implementation of that
biodiversity, because it smacks too much of natural his- idea.
tory. Natural history is a very valuable thing, as cen- As an added bonus, there is a 35-page introduction to
turies of human study will attest, but it should never phylogenetic systematics. This is among the best such in-
be confounded with science. Science is about testing hy- troductions in any language. The candid and unadorned
potheses, and in our business these hypotheses are about writing style comes to the fore, so that the ideas and in-
evolutionary history. It has taken biologists a long time to formation are comprehensible to the uninitiated without
explicate the simple idea that it is the study of biodiver- alienating the experts by oversimplification. None of the
sity that makes biology different from other sciences— complications in phylogeny reconstruction are avoided
the nature and scale of the interrelationships among or- (although the methodology concentrates on parsimony
ganisms is something that has never been conceived of analysis), and yet the concepts are presented in a straight-
within physics and chemistry. Evolutionary history is forward and logical manner, with suitable illustrated ex-
our explanation for the origin of that biodiversity, and amples. The strengths and weaknesses of our current
so the best way to present biodiversity is in the context methods are presented without excuses, and the conse-
of phylogenetic trees. That is what this new book does. quent classifications are presented without apologies to
So, what makes this book different is its strictly (al- the traditional approaches. Only long experience in this
most relentless) phylogenetic perspective. It is based on line of work could produce a synthesis of this type. If
trees, not only as metaphors but as the primary means you ever need to explain phylogenetic systematics to an
of communication—the text and the many excellent line interested member of the general public, then you can
drawings are purely adjuncts to the trees. The book itself safely direct them to this essay.
 2007 BOOK REVIEWS 697
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In the main body of the book, the authors have stuck comments (e.g., Wendel, 2003), the primary expertise of
their necks out to produce one set of trees, and thus the authors still dominates the information content. The
“a” classification (as the title accurately indicates), rather authors justify the imbalance with the claim that they are
than taking a more Bayesian view of life and explic- focusing on “groups that are most important for teaching
itly recognizing uncertainty in phylogeny reconstruc- purposes” (page 7), but that depends very much on what
tion. You will therefore not be hard-pressed to find trees it is that you are teaching. We can hardly claim that we
with which you disagree—these are majority-rule trees, shouldn’t be teaching about insects when we are teach-
not strict-consensus trees. In their favor, they are mostly ing about biodiversity, because they dominate it at the
based on contemporary evidence, so that they reflect cur- macroscopic level. Only some serious excision of verte-
rent opinion rather than established tradition. On the brate taxa would allow the treatments of the other groups
other hand, the overall impression is given that there is to be expanded (the book is large enough as it is).
no contention concerning any of the trees, which we all Although most of the information seems to be accu-
know to be a distorted viewpoint (as do the authors). rate, there are, as with any book, errors that will annoy
Nevertheless, the trees have plenty of polychotomies, you as well as idiosyncrasies that may dismay you. These
and even the occasional dashed line, thus showing where include family names are not given initial capitals (con-
we are currently ignorant about relationships. trary to the codes of nomenclature), the page on Arach-
The authors also do not entertain the notion that the nida has almost no common names (not even to note that
history of life might not be particularly tree-like but may the Acari are ticks and mites), and in an appendix there
instead be an anastomosing plexus of interrelationships. is the descriptive example “Proteaceae (plane)” (neither
The latter is certainly not a new idea, especially in mi- aeroplanes, woodworking planes, nor plane trees are in
crobiology and botany. The conception has even crept that particular plant family). Among the idiosyncrasies
into vertebrate biology. However, perhaps it is enough are a sequence alignment that uses hyphens for identical
that the authors have dealt so well with trees, without residues and asterisks for gaps (which is the convention
asking them to delve into alternative metaphors such as in some parts of molecular biology but not in phyloge-
networks. netics), the failure to mention coccidiosis as a disease
Among the most practically useful parts of the caused by Apicomplexans (it is more widespread than
book are those appendices entitled “Where are They?” the other diseases listed), and some quaint cartoons to
which indicate the position of most of the para- illustrate Homo sapiens that are unfortunately all male.
phyletic/polyphyletic common names that still popu- Interestingly, the Tree of Life (page 49) remains unrooted,
late the biological literature (algae, coelomates, reptiles, so that technically none of the subsequent trees refer to
etc). This is a real boon for non-experts in the particu- monophyletic groups!
lar groups concerned, or for those who are too young to For some of these quibbles, the authors should be
have been brought up with the older names (or are too asked to stand in the corner of the classroom, facing
lazy to learn them). Interestingly, the named groups are the wall, for a couple of hours; after that, they can cor-
indicated as either including or not including their most rect the offending items in the next edition. For future
recent common ancestor, so that paraphyly and poly- editions there will surely be—there have already been
phyly are clearly distinguished from each other. three French editions (2001, 2002, 2006), an Italian edition
Most books on biodiversity still subscribe to the Great (2003), and a German one (2005). This first English edi-
Chain of Being, with evolutionary advancement pro- tion has therefore been long overdue (see Wenzel, 2003).
ceeding inexorably from bacteria (at the beginning of the This is a solidly constructed book that is clearly in-
book) to human beings (at the end). Phylogeneticists will tended for a long life even when subjected to frequent
have no truck with this, however, as all branches on a consultation, which is its purpose. Nevertheless, its un-
phylogenetic tree can be rotated ad libitum. So, although doubted usefulness will ensure that future editions are
bacteria are primal in this book, humans are penultimate, on the way, with revised and updated classifications.
with the ultimate lifeform being ray-finned fishes. This There have already been a number of stylistic changes
neatly illustrates the fact that “Fishes” is a paraphyletic throughout the editions, notably in the current French
group and thus fish should not be lumped together. It has and English editions, so that this version is well thought
taken until the new millennium to get a general-purpose out and very user friendly. All that really needs to hap-
book with a Darwinian-tree view of life rather than an pen in the future is for the book to remain up-to-date in
Aristotelian-linear one. a field that prides itself on constant change. So (unlike
Nevertheless, the thing that will infuriate more read- me), buy yourself a copy, and thus encourage the au-
ers than anything else is the serious level of imbalance thors to keep up their good work. You never know, they
in the treatments of the various clades. For example, may even branch out into the multimedia world, as did
the Hexapoda get two pages in the main text and one Margulis and Schwarz (2002).
page in an appendix, whereas the Angiospermae get
two pages of main text and four pages of appendix. In R EFERENCES
even sharper contrast, the Mollusca get 30 pages of main Lecointre, G., and H. Le Guyader. 2001. La classification phy-
text, and the Vertebrata get more than 150 pages. Al- logénétique du vivant. Éditions Belin, Paris.
though this edition of the book is expanded from previ- Lecointre, G., and H. Le Guyader. 2002. La classification phy-
ous ones, where the imbalances generated some pointed logénétique du vivant, 2e édition. Éditions Belin, Paris.
 698 SYSTEMATIC BIOLOGY VOL. 56
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Lecointre, G., and H. Le Guyader. 2003. La sistematica della vita: Una Margulis, L., and K. V. Schwartz (eds). 2002. Five kingdoms: A mul-
guida alla classificazione filogenetica. (Tradotto da Carlo Brena.) timedia guide to the phyla of life on Earth (Win/Mac CD-ROM),
Zanichelli, Bologna. version 2.0. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Lecointre, G., and H. Le Guyader. 2005. Biosystematik: Alle Organis- Wenzel, J. W. 2003. A user’s guide to the tree of life. Cladistics 19:376–
men im Überblick. (Von Claudia Schön übersetzt.) Springer-Verlag, 378.
Berlin.
Lecointre, G., and H. Le Guyader. 2006. La classification phy-
logénétique du vivant, 3e édition (revue et augmentée). Éditions
Belin, Paris.
Margulis, L., and K. V. Schwartz (eds). 1997. Five kingdoms: An illus- David A. Morrison, Department of Parasitology (SWEPAR), National Vet-
trated guide to the phyla of life on Earth, 3rd edition (revised). W.H. erinary Institute and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 751 89
Freeman, New York. Uppsala, Sweden; E-mail: [email protected]

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