Provides a synthesis of knowledge about the history of life. This work treats the major groups of organisms. It is useful for evolutionary biologists, taxonomists, ecologists interested in biodiversity, and for organismic biologists, botanists, and microbiologists.

Contributors Introduction: Charting the Tree of Life Michael J. Donoghue and Joel Cracraft: The Importance of Knowing the Tree of Life 1: Terry L. Yates, Jorge Salazar-Bravo, and Jerry W. Dragoo: The Importance of the Tree of Life to Society 2: Rita R. Colwell: A Tangled Bank: Reflections on the Tree of Life and Human Health 3: Douglas J. Futuyma: The Fruit of the Tree of Life: Insights into Evolution and Ecology The Origin and Radiation of Life on Earth 4: S.L. Baldauf, D. Bhattacharya, J. Cockrill, P. Hugenholtz, J. Pawlowski, and G.B. Simpson: The Tree of Life: An Overview 5: Norman R. Pace: The Early Branches in the Tree of Life 6: W. Ford Doolittle: Bacteria and Archaea 7: Herve Philippe: The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes 8: David P. Mindell, Joshua S. Rest, and Luis P. Villarreal: Viruses and the Tree of Life The Relationships of Green Plants 9: Charles F. Delwiche, Robert A. Anderson, Debashish Bhattacharya, Brent D. Mishler, and Richard M. McCourt: Algal Evolution and the Early Radiation of Green Plants 10: Kathleen M. Pryer, Harald Schneider, and Susana Magallon: The Radiation of Vascular Plants 11: Pamela S. Soltis, Douglas E. Soltis, Mark W. Chase, Peter K. Endress, and Peter R. Crane: The Diversification of Flowering Plants The Relationship of Fungi 12: John W. Taylor, Joseph Spatafora, Kerry O'Donnell, Francois Lutzoni, Timothy James, David S. Hibbett, David Geiser, Thomas D. Bruns, and Meredith Blackwell: The Fungi The Relationships of Animals: Overview 13: Douglas J. Eernisse and Kevin J. Peterson: The History of Animals 14: Protostomes and Platyhelminthes: The Worm's Turn D. Timothy, J. Littlewood, Maximilian J. Telford, and Rodney A. Bray: The Relationship of Animals: Lophotrochozoans 15: Mark E. Siddall, Elizabeth Borda, and Gregory W. Rouse: Toward a Tree of Life for Annelida 16: David R. Lindberg, Winston F. Ponder, and Gerhard Haszprunar: The Mollusca: Relationships and Patterns from Their First Half-Billion Years The Relationships of Animals: Ecdysozoans 17: Ward C. Wheeler, Gonzalo Giribet, and Gregory D. Edgecombe: Arthropod Systematics: The Comparative Study of Genomic, Anatomical, and Paleontological Information 18: Jonathan A. Coddington, Gonzalo Giribet, Mark S. Harvey, Lorenzo Prendini, and David E. Walter: Arachnida 19: Frederick R. Schram and Stefan Koenemann: Are the Crustaceans Monophyletic? 20: Rainer Willmann: Phylogenetic Relationship and Evolution of Insects 21: Michael F. Whiting: Phylogeny of the Holometabolous Insects: The Most Successful Group of Terrestrial Organisms The Relationships of Animals: Deuterostomes 22: Andrew B. Smith, Kevin J. Peterson, Gregory Wray, and D.T. Littlewood: From Bilateral Symmetry to Pentaradiality: The Phylogeny of Hemichordates and Echinoderms 23: Timothy Rowe: Chordate Phylogeny and Development 24: M.L.J. Stiassny, E.O. Wiley, G.D. Johnson, and M.R. de Carvalho: Gnathostome Fishes 25: David Cannatella and David M. Hillis: Amphibians: Leading a Life of Slime 26: Michael S.Y. Lee, Todd W. Reeder, Joseph B. Slowinski, and Robin Lawson: Resolving Reptile Relationships: Molecular and Morphological Markers 27: Joel Cracraft, F. Keith Barker, Michael Braun, John Harshman, Gareth J. Dyke, Julie Feinstein, Scott Stanley, Alice Cibois, Peter Schikler, Pamela Beresford, Jaime Garcia-Moreno, Michael D. Sorenson, Tamaki Yuri, and David P. Mindell: Phylogenetic Relationships among Modern Birds (Neornithes): Toward an Avian Tree of Life 28: Maureen A. O'Leary, Marc Allard, Michael J. Novacek, Jin Meng, and John Gatesy: Building the Mammalian Sector of the Tree of Life: Combining Different Data and a Discussion of Divergence Times for Placental Mammals 29: Bernard Wood and Paul Constantino: Human Origins: Life at the Top of the Tree Perspectives on the Tree of Life 30: The Meaning of Biodiversity and the Tree of Life Edward O. Wilson: 31: David B. Wake: A Tree Grows in Manhattan 32: The Tree of Life and the Grand Synthesis of Biology David M. Hillis: 33: Michael J. Donoghue: Immeasurable Progress on the Tree of Life 34: Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue: Assembling the Tree of Life: Where We Stand at the Beginning of the 21st Century Index

Assembling the Tree of Life should also meet the editors' larger goal. It will help the systematic community aspire toward a common goal, identify priorities for future coordinated work, and mobilize our resources. Science, Vol 307, 4 February 2005.

"Assembling the Tree of Life presents a preliminary view of one of the grand enterprises of modern science, resolving the phylogeny of all life... This volume, the product of a 2002 symposium by the same name held at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, seeks to blow away the mist and reveal the structure of the whole Tree and, in doing so, galvanize the systematics community toward unifying its goals." -- Science "Assembling the Tree of Life presents a preliminary view of one of the grand enterprises of modern science, resolving the phylogeny of all life... This volume, the product of a 2002 symposium by the same name held at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, seeks to blow away the mist and reveal the structure of the whole Tree and, in doing so, galvanize the systematics community toward unifying its goals." -- Science "...individual chapters will be useful for those seeking a meaty overview of a particular clade. Most of the systematic chapters are written by the premier experts in the area and include a brief synapsis of the morphology of the groupm, some anatomical highlights and comments on diversity. The better chapters include detailed and critical commentaries on previous phylogenetic analyses and discuss where they might have gone wrong; the chapter by Maureen A. O'Leary and colleagues on mammalian phylogeny is particular noteworthy in this regard." -- American Scientist