Phylogenetic comparative approaches are powerful analytical tools for making evolutionary inferences from interspecific data and phylogenies. The phylogenetic toolkit available to evolutionary biologists is currently growing at an incredible speed, but most methodological papers are published in the specialized statistical literature and many are incomprehensible for the user community. This textbook provides an overview of several newly developed phylogenetic comparative methods that allow to investigate a broad array of questions on how phenotypic characters evolve along the branches of phylogeny and how such mechanisms shape complex animal communities and interspecific interactions. The individual chapters were written by the leading experts in the field and using a language that is accessible for practicing evolutionary biologists. The authors carefully explain the philosophy behind different methodologies and provide pointers - mostly using a dynamically developing online interface - on how these methods can be implemented in practice. These "conceptual" and "practical" materials are essential for expanding the qualification of both students and scientists, but also offer a valuable resource for educators. Another value of the book are the accompanying online resources (available at: http://www.mpcm-evolution.com), where the authors post and permanently update practical materials to help embed methods into practice.

Part I: Introduction

An Introduction to the Phylogenetic Comparative Method
Working with the Tree of Life in Comparative Studies: How to Build and Tailor Phylogenies to Interspecific Datasets
An Introduction to Supertree Construction (and Partitioned Phylogenetic Analyses) with a View toward the Distinction between Gene Trees and Species Trees
Graphical Methods for Visualizing Comparative Data on Phylogenies
A Primer on Phylogenetic Generalised Least Squares
Statistical Issues and Assumptions of Phylogenetic Generalised Least Squares
Part II: Handling Phylogenies in Different Statistical Designs
Uncertainties due to Within-Species Variation in Comparative Studies: Measurement Errors and Statistical Weights
An Introduction to Phylogenetic Path Analysis
Phylogenetic Logistic Regression for Binary Dependent Variables
Keeping Yourself Updated: Bayesian Approaches in Phylogenetic Comparative Methods with a focus on Markov-chain models of Discrete Character Evolution.-General Quantitative Genetic Methods for Comparative Biology
Multimodel-Inference in Comparative Analyses
Part III: Specific Models for Studying Evolutionary Mechanisms
Simulation of Phylogenetic Data
Use and Misuse of Comparative Methods in the Study of Adaptation
Modelling Stabilising Selection: the Attraction of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Models
Hidden Markov Models for Studying the Evolution of Binary Morphological Characters
Detecting Phenotypic Selection by Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) in Phylogenetic Comparative Methods
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods for Studying Clade-Wide Convergence
Metrics and Models of Community Phylogenetics
Event-Based Cophylogenetic Comparative Analysis
Phylogenetic Prediction to Identify "Evolutionary Singularities"
Preparing Paleontological Datasets for Phylogenetic Comparative Methods.