Phylogeny mandalas for illustrating the Tree of Life

Masami Hasegawa

doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2016.11.001

Phylogeny mandalas for illustrating the Tree of Life

Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2017 Dec:117:168-178. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2016.11.001. Epub 2016 Nov 2.

Author

Masami Hasegawa¹

Affiliation

¹ The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Midori-cho 10-3, Tachikawa, Tokyo 190-8562, Japan. Electronic address: masamihase@gmail.com.

PMID: 27816710
DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2016.11.001

Abstract

A circular phylogeny with photos or drawings of species is named a phylogeny mandala. This is one of the ways for illustrating the Tree of Life, and is suitable to show visually how the biodiversity has developed in the course of evolution as clarified by the molecular phylogenetics. To demonstrate the recent progress of molecular phylogenetics, six phylogeny mandalas for various taxonomic groups of life were presented; i.e., (1) Eukaryota, (2) Metazoa, (3) Hexapoda, (4) Tetrapoda, (5) Eutheria, and (6) Primates.

Keywords: Molecular phylogenetics; Phylogeny mandala; Tree of Life.

MeSH terms

Animals
Biodiversity*
Books, Illustrated*
Eukaryota / genetics
Evolution, Molecular*
Phylogeny*
Primates / genetics