Cladistics: a practical primer on CD-ROM accompanied with a textbook

Cladistics and phylogenetic reconstruction are subjects which biology students find quite difficult to grasp when taught from conventional textbooks. This CD provides students with a complete self-study introductory course in phylogenetic reconstruction using cladistic analysis. The CD is fully interactive and includes animated sequences, questions at the end of each section, and practical exercises. It is the first exclusively pedagogical CD-ROM devoted to this topic. By the end of the course students should have a basic understanding of cladistics and be able to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships from morphological and molecular data. The CD-ROM is accompanied by a short textbook. The book is meant to be used in conjunction with the CD-ROM but can act as a stand-alone aid to learning when the reader is away from the computer.

Introduction, Part I. First Principles: 1.1 Reconstructing evolutionary history from observed differences, 1.2 Parsimony and tree construction, Part II. Characters and Homology: 2.1 Homology and homoplasy, 2.2 Homology in molecular data, 2.3 Character definition, 2.4 Weighting, Part III. Cladograms and Trees: 3.1 Rooting procedures and character polarity, 3.2 Cladograms, phylograms, and phylogenetic trees, 3.3 Monophyly, paraphyly, and polyphyly, 3.4 Consensus trees, Part IV. Fit and Robustness: 4.1 Measuring goodness of fit, 4.2 Tests of robustness, Part V. Practical Exercise: 5.1 Phylogenetic analysis of eight species of sea-urchins, 5.2 Cladistic analysis of morphological characters, 5.3 Cladistic analysis of molecular characters, 5.4 Comparison of results and conclusions.