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Phylogenetic Systematics

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This is the founding work for cladistic theory (which Hennig called phylogenetic systematics, hence the title). Cladistics has become so pervasive in biology and paleontology that this work should be considered mandatory reading for people employed in or seriously interested in either field.

Basically, cladistics is a method of determining hierarchical evolutionary relationships based on the transformation of morphological (now includes genetic) characters of organisms (plants, animals, etc.). Hennig called these transformed characters "apomorphic characters". Using these characters for a group of species, a cladistic analysis is performed.

While cladistic analysis is a complicated process, at its most fundamental level it is an analysis based on the number of these characters transformed between species. The results allow a "tree of descent" to be worked out that gives (in a broad sense) the relative evolutionary relationships of a set of organisms.

Hennig touches only briefly on the actual process. This book is much more about the theories that underly cladistics than about the actual practice of it.

While several previous workers had many of the ideas espoused by Hennig, he was the first to synthesize these ideas and (adding elements of his own) to form what is now cladistics. This area of study has grown and changed over the four decades since Hennig's work was translated into English and began to receive broad attention by the scientific community. Thus, many of the ideas in this book are expressed in a more primitive fashion than they are currently, having in the interim been developed by a number of later workers. The book, however, is still vital reading for understanding cladistics, since it is the basis of all subsequent work on the subject.

A translation of the Hennig's original ideas about the science of systematics... One of the most well built set of ideas to help us to understand the evolution of living organisms. A methodological framework to test hypotheses about the evolutionary history of species under a darwininian perspective and a popperian logic.The most robust, elegant and "parsimonious" statement about what homology really means...

Anyone who wishes to be considered a serious student of systematics and biodiversity should own and read this book. Many of the philosophical ideas are as fresh today as they were 40 years ago when Hennig's 1950 German masterpiece was updated and translated into English. This book changed everything about systematics and, for that matter, evolution. Phylogenies are now the backbone of much evolutionary research and the only reason that they are is due to the triumph of Phylogenetics.