Now that scientists can sequences genes with relative ease, the relationships among living organisms are becoming better known. Those relationships are summarized as phylogenetic trees. This book reveals how those trees can be used to give insights into diverse fields of biological enquiry including ecology, epidemiology, development, conservation, and the evolutionary process itself.

John Maynard Smith was originally trained as an engineer but, despite important excursions into animal mechanics, ecology and ethology, he is now best known as an international authority on evolution. His pre-eminence is based in large part on original research contributions coupled with an uncanny ability for revealing simple explanations to apparently intractable problems. This wide-ranging volume contains a collection of new and original essays, all inspired by Maynard Smith's writings. The essays span the whole field of evolutionary biology: from microevolution to macroevolution; from evolutionarily stable strategies to sympatric speciation; and from population processes in plants to the arithmetic of assessment in animals.

The first volume in the Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution, this important new book explains how and when to use the comparative method and shows how this approach complements other approaches to problem-solving in evolution such as optimality theory, population genetic models, and experimentation. The authors provide thorough discussion of techniques and also worked examples. Their work will be of interest to all students of evolution.

John Maynard Smith was originally trained as an engineer but, despite important excursions into animal mechanics, ecology and ethology, he is now best known as an international authority on evolution. His pre-eminence is based in large part on original research contributions coupled with an uncanny ability for revealing simple explanations to apparently intractable problems. This wide-ranging volume contains a collection of new and original essays, all inspired by Maynard Smith's writings. The essays span the whole field of evolutionary biology: from microevolution to macroevolution; from evolutionarily stable strategies to sympatric speciation; and from population processes in plants to the arithmetic of assessment in animals.