Phylosystemics: Merging Phylogenomics, Systems Biology, and Ecology to Study Evolution

Abstract

We define phylosystemics, a multidisciplinary strategy uniting short timescale interaction studies from systems biologists and ecologists with the longer timescale studies familiar to evolutionary biologists, taking advantage of methods from network sciences. Phylosystemics superimposes evolutionary information on entities/edges forming interaction networks produced by systems biology and ecology. At the molecular level, phylosystemics could provide evidence to infer and to time the evolution of molecular processes within a single branch of a phylogeny, in particular between the first and last common ancestors of a group arising during a major evolutionary transition. At the ecosystemic level, phylosystemics could culminate with the development of multilayer temporal networks encompassing biotic and abiotic interactions, whose analyses could unravel ecological interactions with evolutionary consequences.