Stephen Blackmore and Alexandra H. Wortley
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267725
- eISBN:
- 9780520947993
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267725.003.0002
- Subject:
- Biology, Evolutionary Biology / Genetics
This Festschrift for Chris Humphries provides an opportunity to reflect on how much has changed in systematic biology since the 1970s. Humphries, together with his longtime collaborator, Kåre Bremer, ...
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This Festschrift for Chris Humphries provides an opportunity to reflect on how much has changed in systematic biology since the 1970s. Humphries, together with his longtime collaborator, Kåre Bremer, pioneered the application of cladistic methods of phylogeny reconstruction in the Compositae and soon influenced the systematics of other groups of living and fossil plants. Today, the classification of the Compositae has been turned literally upside-down thanks to the availability of DNA sequence characters and the almost universally adopted procedures of phylogenetic systematics. There can be little doubt that Humphries's pivotal role in the promotion of cladistics was greatly enhanced by his appointment to the Department of Botany at the (then) British Museum (Natural History). This chapter focuses on Humphries's contribution to the field of evolution and development. It considers how the field of ontogeny and systematics has developed through to the present day, with particular emphasis on pollen ontogeny. It concluded that Humphries played an influential role in the emergence of the discipline now recognized as “evo-devo”: evolutionary developmental biology.Less
This Festschrift for Chris Humphries provides an opportunity to reflect on how much has changed in systematic biology since the 1970s. Humphries, together with his longtime collaborator, Kåre Bremer, pioneered the application of cladistic methods of phylogeny reconstruction in the Compositae and soon influenced the systematics of other groups of living and fossil plants. Today, the classification of the Compositae has been turned literally upside-down thanks to the availability of DNA sequence characters and the almost universally adopted procedures of phylogenetic systematics. There can be little doubt that Humphries's pivotal role in the promotion of cladistics was greatly enhanced by his appointment to the Department of Botany at the (then) British Museum (Natural History). This chapter focuses on Humphries's contribution to the field of evolution and development. It considers how the field of ontogeny and systematics has developed through to the present day, with particular emphasis on pollen ontogeny. It concluded that Humphries played an influential role in the emergence of the discipline now recognized as “evo-devo”: evolutionary developmental biology.
