As of February 2008 there were 85 759 586 764 bases in 82 853 685 sequences stored in GenBank (Nucleic Acids Research, Database issue, January 2008). Under any criteria, this is a staggering amount of data. Although these sequences come from a myriad of organisms, from viruses to humans, and include genes with a diverse arrange of functions, it can all, at least in principle, be studied from an evolutionary perspective. But how? If ever there was an invitation panic, it is this. Enter The Phylogenetic Handbook, an invaluable guide to the phylogenetic universe.

The first edition of The Phylogenetic Handbook was published in 2003 and represented something of a landmark in evolutionary biology, as it was the first accessible, hands-on instruction manual for molecular phylogenetics, yet with a healthy dose of theory. Up until this point, the evolutionary analysis of gene sequence was often considered something of a black art. The Phylogenetic Handbook made it accessible to anyone with a desktop computer.

The new edition The Phylogenetic Handbook moves the field along nicely and has a number of important intellectual and structural changes from the earlier edition.