Preface to the study guide

This is a reading guide to David A. Baum and Stacy D. Smiths Tree Thinking: An Introduction to Phylogenetic Biology, 4th edition. More information about the book can be found at the book’s website, and it can be purchased from Amazon.com.

Tree Thinking is a fabulous book for students researchers that need to understand or do basic phylogenetics and either need a concise primer on the key issues

This reading guide serves several purposes:

  • Highlight the parts of the book I focus on in my teaching (and so will be on any tests!)
  • Indicate key vocab
  • Provide additional complementary examples
  • Provide citations and links to resources for follow-up

Each part of the reading guide is essentially an outline of each chapter with commentary as needed. In some cases I have written a brief initial commentary to put the chapter in context.

My most important notes and comments are generally in bold or bulleted. When I’ve riffed on an idea and its not necessarily key I’ve usually put in in a block quote, like the one below:

For example, sometimes I’ve written about a section, and my text is almost as long as the original section!

This is a work in progress and many sections are not yet annotated; feel free to contact me with suggestions or corrections.

Nathan Brouwer