Charles Darwin, the Tree of Life, and understanding biodiversity

 
Michael J. Donoghue 

Yale University, USA 

Firmly establishing the existence of the Tree of Life was perhaps Charles Darwin's most profound contribution. Although the idea that extant species share common ancestors at various times in the past was quickly accepted by the scientific community, methods for inferring these relationships were not developed until much later. And, it is only over the past two decades that knowledge of phylogenetic relationships has expanded to the point of becoming generally useful. Currently, our main problems are keeping up with the pace of progress and deeply integrating tree thinking into biological research of all sorts. I will focus on the uses of phylogenetic trees in understanding the distribution of biodiversity and in predicting responses to global change. Darwin would be extremely pleased, though not entirely surprised, by the widely varied uses we are now finding for phylogenetic trees.