Statistical Methods in Molecular Evolution
Simon Whelan, Rasmus O. Nielsen · Systematic Biology · 2006
Molecular evolution and its sister disciplines of phylogenetics, molecular systematics, and comparative genomics are progressing rapidly. Of particular importance has been the creation of powerful statistical tools, which have enabled biologists to coax increasingly more information from biological data. Statistical Methods in Molecular Evolution seeks to provide an introduction to these tools and the mathematical theory that underpins them. Before discussing the contents of the book, it is useful to linger for a moment on its definition of the phrase “molecular evolution”: only the evolution of biological sequences or things that can be simply inferred from them, such as gene order or microsatellite length, are covered in the book. There is little to no discussion about the evolution of protein structures, alternative splicing, domain shuffling, or the currently fashionable topic of network evolution. This is not a criticism—a book can only cover a limited number of topics—but potential readers should be aware of its limitations. The target audience covers those people with either mathematical or biological backgrounds, with the intention of being accessible to most numerically minded biology research students. This is a difficult task to manage and there are inevitably chapters that many biologists will struggle with, because some ideas are presented in a relatively formal statistical way and/or deal with particularly difficult conceptual issues. The majority of authors, however, do try and guide less technically minded readers through some quite difficult subject matter, and in general they succeed, making the book a pleasant and informative read.