Lecture 1 Flashcards
What is taxonomy?
Naming and categorizing organisms based on shared traits.
What are the 3 information that phylogenies rely on?
Morphological traits, developmental processes (gene), molecular
Who developed the formal hierarchical system of taxonomy and binomial scientific naming system?
Carlus Linnaeus
What is phylogeny?
The evolutionary history of a species or group of related species.
What do nodes represent in phylogenetic trees?
Diverged branch points of two species to depict common ancestors.
What is the discipline of systematics?
It classifies organisms and determines their evolutionary relationships.
What do systematists use to infer evolutionary relationships?
Fossils, morphological data, biochemical data (proteins), genetic data
What are sister taxa in a phylogenetic tree?
Groups that share an immediate common ancestor (refers to 2 species)
What does a rooted tree include?
A branch to represent the last common ancestor of all taxa in the tree.
What is a polytomy?
A branch that has more than 2 groups emerge.
What is homologies?
There’s phenotypic and genetic similarities because of shared ancestry. In turn, are likely closely related than other organisms.
What is homology?
Similarity due to shared ancestry.
What is analogy?
Similarity due to convergent evolution.
Why are researches using molecular biology tools?
To easily sequence specific genes from organisms to compare genes to infer evolutionary relationships.
What are cladistics?
groups of organisms by common descent
