Abstract
Phylogenetics has been pivotal in enabling biological sciences more relevant to life and life forms since the 1980s. In the last two decades, the development of omics has transformed the phylogenetics too. While molecular phylogeny was initially used in following evolutionary biology of species, today it is being applied in many special fields such as conservation biology, entomology, microbiology, etc. including forestry science. Studies on phylogenetic diversity have always stressed that the biodiversity conservation program should not limit itself at conservation of species richness and evenness, but also aim at conserving the evolutionary history. In simple words, the loss of certain taxa or species will be irreplaceable in the “tree of life,” i.e., protecting the natural results of evolution which are priceless. This also warrants greater allocation of resources for conservation. For instance, tropical forests are known for species richness, wherein trees specifically are diverse in terms of both species diversity and genetic diversity. Phylogenetic study has stressed globally on reorienting our conceptual understanding of tropical forests. This chapter discusses the general outlook of phylogenetic-based biodiversity conservation and common methods, which is followed by the status report on the application of phylogenetics in forestry, and concludes that phylogeny methodology coupled with wide sampling in tropical forests will facilitate in obtaining detailed biodiversity information at the local scale where conservation efforts can be focused.
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Rajarajan, K., Vishnu, R., Priyadarshini, E., Arunachalam, P., Ramanan, S.S. (2022). Phylogenetics in the Context of Tree Diversity and Conservation. In: Kumar, A., Choudhury, B., Dayanandan, S., Khan, M.L. (eds) Molecular Genetics and Genomics Tools in Biodiversity Conservation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6005-4_2
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