BOUCHARD , Frederic

Ever since Darwin, the familiar genealogical pattern known as the Tree of Life (TOL) has been prominent in evolutionary thinking and has dominated not only systematics, but also the analysis of the units of evolution. However, recent findings indicate that the evolution of DNA, especially in prokaryotes and such DNA vehicles as viruses and...

All evolutionary biologists are familiar with evolutionary units that evolve by vertical descent in a tree-like fashion in single lineages. However, many other kinds of processes contribute to evolutionary diversity. In vertical descent, the genetic material of a particular evolutionary unit is propagated by replication inside its own lineage....