Darwin presented the evolution of life as branched like a tree. This idea has been upended by evolutionary biology through studying life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level using DNA sequences. This reexamination of the history of all life has replaced Darwin's branching tree with a much more complex maze of branches.
In The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, David Quammen weaves together the stories of scientists and their genetic discoveries as they built a new view of the history of life that shows that DNA can be passed not between individuals but between species.
According to one reviewer, the book is “A masterful history of a new field of molecular biology . . . . [An] impressive account of perhaps the most unheralded scientific revolution of the 20th century. . . . A consistently engaging collection of vivid portraits of brilliant, driven, quarrelsome scientists in the process of dramatically altering the fundamentals of evolution, illuminated by the author's insightful commentary.”
The book is well-written and the SDG should be a joy for those who are interested in new developments in evolutionary biology.
Note: The weekly topics are structured around the chapters of the core book so we will approach the subject in the same order as the author. The reading for each week is roughly 50 pages. As the chapter titles suggest, we will begin with Darwin's branching tree model and move through the discoveries that species merged DNA with other species until we reach the maze of branches that represent current understanding.
Week one- Darwin's Sketch
Week two - A Separate Form of Life
Week three - Mergers and Acquisitions
Week four - BIg Tree
Week five - Infective Heredity
Week six - Topiary
Week seven - E. Pluribus Human