Biodiversity and the Tree of Life

1. Biodiversity and the Tree of Life Brent D. Mishler Dept. of Integrative BiologyUniversity and Jepson HerbariaBerkeley Natural History Museums

2. Summary of talk • What is biodiversity and why is it important? • The importance of the Tree of Life: two big ideas for students! • A quick run-through of major branches of the Tree, with emphasis on plants. • Introduction to teaching phylogenetic reconstruction. • A brief introduction to comparative genomics.

3. What is biodiversity? It is the whole tree of life! A single, magnificent genealogy connecting all organisms alive today. Two main lessons for students: 1. We are all related -- not just in the John Muir sense of all being part of the same worldwide ecosystem, but literally genealogically related ! ** This should inform our moral treatment of other living things. 2. We are not all that special -- just one tiny twig on a strange, gigantic tree that took root on one little planet in an infinite universe. You are here

4. What is the value of biodiversity? • ethical: each lineage is a thread in an heirloom fabric that we have the responsibility to pass on to future generations. • intellectual: we have a basic need to understand the world, how it came to be, and where we fit in it. • ecological: biodiversity is needed for proper function of ecosystems, and as the raw material for natural selection (future evolutionary potential). • economic: natural lineages are a potential source for a myriad of products of direct economic benefit (medicines, food, esthetics, shelter, etc.).

5. Valley Life Sciences Building

6. The Berkeley Natural History Museums is a consortium of six museums, which together encompass some of the world's most valuable natural history and anthropology collections. Their unique synthesis of research, teaching, outreach and collections allows in-depth insights into the history and evolution of life. • University and Jepson Herbaria • Museum of Vertebrate Zoology • Essig Museum of Entomology • Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology • University of California Botanical Garden • University of California Museum of Paleontology http://bnhm.berkeley.museum/index.shtml

7. Courtesy of Sogin Lab -- MBL

8. Crown Eukaryotes: Metazoa (animals) Fungi (mushrooms, molds, yeast) Green Plants (green algae, land plants) Rhodophyta (red algae) Alveolates (dinoflagellates, ciliates) Stramenopiles (brown algae, diatoms, oomycetes, chrysophytes)

9. How can we discover phylogenetic history? • You can’t actually see phylogeny, so how do you make inferences about it? • Think of a huge oak tree buried in a sand dune, with only the tips of the twigs showing -- what would you do? • The concept of historical markers -- characters • Need to find something that changed its condition along a lineage, and survived in recognizable form to the present. http://ib.berkeley.edu/courses/bio1b/evolutionfall06/evolutionf06.html

10. period of shared history a marker changing state Phylogenetic Reconstruction: Need to find markers that can be hypothesized to have changed their state on some shared branch in the past, and to have retained a recognizable record of the derived state to the present.

11. Phylogenetics explained: homology -- a feature shared by two lineages because of descent from an ancestor that had the feature. transformation - a heritable change in a homology along a lineage from a prior state to a posterior state divergence -- the splitting of one lineage into two lineages reticulation - the blending of two lineages into one lineage monophyly -- all and only descendants of a common ancestor