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Trees within trees: phylogeny and historical associations.
1Division of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology, Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK G12 8QQ.
Trends in Ecology & Evolution
|January 18, 2011
Summary
Understanding historical associations across biology, like parasites tracking hosts or genes tracking organisms, can be unified. A general analytical tool may apply to these diverse evolutionary tracking problems.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Molecular evolution
- Coevolution
- Biogeography
Background:
- Historical associations between lineages are common in biology.
- Examples include gene-organism, parasite-host, and organism-environment tracking.
- These diverse associations share underlying similarities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the commonalities among different types of historical associations.
- To propose a unified analytical framework for studying lineage tracking.
- To demonstrate that diverse biological tracking problems might be special cases of a general problem.
Main Methods:
- Comparative analysis of different evolutionary association types.
- Conceptual framework development for historical associations.
- Exploration of potential unifying mathematical or computational tools.
Main Results:
- Identified parallels between gene-organism, parasite-host, and organism-environment associations.
- Highlighted the concept of 'lineage tracking' with varying fidelity.
- Suggested the possibility of a single analytical approach applicable across these fields.
Conclusions:
- Diverse biological associations represent a general problem of lineage tracking.
- A unified analytical tool could advance understanding in molecular evolution, coevolution, and biogeography.
- Further research into such a general tool is warranted.
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