Abstract
Evolutionary relationships between species are usually represented in phylogenies, i.e. evolutionary trees, which are a type of networks. The terminal nodes of these trees represent species, which are made of individuals and populations among which gene flow occurs. This flow can be represented as a network. In this paper we briefly show some properties of these complex networks of evolutionary and ecological relationships. First, we characterize large scale evolutionary relationships in the Tree of Life by a degree distribution. Second, we represent genetic relationships between individuals of a Mediterranean marine plant, Posidonia oceanica in terms of a Minimum Spanning Tree. Finally, relationships among plant shoots inside populations are represented as networks of genetic similarity. | ArXiv pre-print: http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0703067. | Original proceeding available at AIP site: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.2746728.-- Also available from Springer: http://www.springer.com/physics/book/978-0-7354-0421-2. | We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish MEC (Spain) and FEDER through projects CONOCE2 (FIS2004-00953) and SICOFIB (FIS2006-09966), the Portuguese FCT through project NETWORK (POCI/MAR/57342/2004), the BBVA Foundation (Spain), and the European Commission through the NEST-Complexity project EDEN (043251).