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This book presents coverage of the principles and practice of molecular clocks, which have provided fascinating and unprecedented insights into the evolutionary timescale of life on earth. It begins by following the early development of the molecular evolutionary clock in the 1960s, and leads to the complex statistical approaches that are now used to analyse genome sequences. The chapters of this book have been contributed by leading experts in the field and address the important issues of evolutionary rates, molecular dating, and phylogenomic analysis. This is the first time that these different aspects of the molecular clock have been brought together in a single, comprehensive volume. It is an invaluable reference for students and researchers interested in evolutionary biology, genetic analysis, and genomic evolution.
List of contents
Part 1. Introduction.- Chapter 1. The Molecular Clock and Evolutionary Rates Across the Tree of Life.- Chapter 2. Molecular Evolution: A Brief Introduction.- Chapter 3. Spontaneous Mutation Rates.- Chapter 4. Causes of Variation in the Rate of Molecular Evolution.- Part 2. Molecular Dating.- Chapter 5. Principles of Molecular Dating.- Chapter 6. Bayesian Molecular Dating.- Chapter 7. Clock Models for Evolution of Discrete Phenotypic Characters.- Chapter 8. Calibrations from the Fossil Record.- Part 3. Calibrating Molecular Clocks.- Chapter 9. Biogeographic Dating of Phylogenetic Divergence Times Using Priors and Processes.- Chapter 10. Estimating evolutionary rates and timescales from time-stamped data.- Chapter 11. Total-Evidence Dating and the Fossilized Birth-Death Model.- Part 4. Phylogenomics.- Chapter 12. Efficient methods for dating evolutionary divergences.- Chapter 13. Bayesian Phylogenomic Dating.
About the author
Simon Ho is a Professor of Molecular Evolution at the University of Sydney. His research interests include molecular evolution, phylogenetics, and molecular clocks. He previously worked at the Australian National University, after receiving his doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Summary
This book presents coverage of the principles and practice of molecular clocks, which have provided fascinating and unprecedented insights into the evolutionary timescale of life on earth. It begins by following the early development of the molecular evolutionary clock in the 1960s, and leads to the complex statistical approaches that are now used to analyse genome sequences. The chapters of this book have been contributed by leading experts in the field and address the important issues of evolutionary rates, molecular dating, and phylogenomic analysis. This is the first time that these different aspects of the molecular clock have been brought together in a single, comprehensive volume. It is an invaluable reference for students and researchers interested in evolutionary biology, genetic analysis, and genomic evolution.
