Systematics, the science of the study of relationships between organisms, has seen remarkable developments over the last fifty years. Carol Kaesuk Yoon was a graduate student in Cornell in the late 1980s, trying to elucidate the rela- tionships between some fruit fies using the then still fairly novel technique of DNA analysis. There she witnessed some of the vitriolic debates between cladists and evolutionary biologists, two warring groups of systematists who interpreted relationships in very different ways. In fact, analysis of the molecular data that she and others were then starting to use has had profound consequences for our understanding of the living world, and our knowledge of the genealogical relation- ships between organisms is increasing by leaps and bounds.
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