Molecular 14-17 Flashcards
What is homoplasy ?
A characteristic shared by a set of species that is not present in their common ancestor.
What is autopomorphy ?
A derived trait that is unique to a taxon
What is symplesiomorphy ?
An ancestral characteristic shared by 2 or more taxa but also shared with other taxa earlier in the clade
What is an apomorphy and what can they be used as ?
A novel evolutionary characteristic that is unique to species and all its descendants. They can be used as a defining characteristic.
What is a synapomorphy ?
a characteristic present in an ancestral species and shared exclusively by its evolutionary descendants. Forms a clade
What is a monophyletic group and give an example ?
A group that includes all the taxa derived from the most recent common ancestor
Birds and crocodiles
What is a paraphyletic group and give an example ?
A convenience taxon that does not contain all the descendants of the MRCA
reptiles
What are the 2 distance based tree methods ?
Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic means
Neighbour join tree methods
What are the 3 tree searching methods ?
Maximum parsimony
Maximum likelihood
Baysian method
How does the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic means work ?And what is a limitation ?
Simply takes the most similar taxa and draws a tree with d/2 branch then adds the next most similar taxa
Based on false assumptions
How does the neighbour joining tree work ? And what is an advantage and a disadvantage ?
Finds the shortest overall tree for each pair of taxa
Masks true uncertainty in tree branching patten
Generates single tree
How does the maximum parsimony tree work ? And what is an advantage and a disadvantage ?
Based on character states
Finds the tree topology that requires smallest number of evolutionary steps (Advantage)
May produce multiple trees of equal likelihood
How does the maximum likelihood tree work ? And what is an advantage and a disadvantage ?
Identifies the most likely tree from all possible trees in which observed sequences would occur
Only produces one tree
Computationally intensive
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the baysian method ?
Most accurate
Branch lengths can be compared
Computationally intensive
Requires MrBayes software
What can we tell from an unrooted tree ?
The level of divergence between any OTUs but cannot tell the direction of descent
How can you root a tree ?
- Outgroup rooting: Include an outgroup that diverged earlier than the ingroup (must have external evidence for divergence and not to genetically different 20/66% rule)
- Midpoint rooting- Assumes equal rates of evolution and that the longest pathway between UTOs represents the most distant separation
What is the difference between a scaled and an unscaled tree ?
Cladogram=shows clades only= unscaled
Phylogram = shows clades and levels of divergence=scaled
What happens if clades are unresolved ?
polytomy (multiple branching) resulting in confusion about common ancestors
What are the units of a scaled tree ?
(Base (pair)) substitutions per site
What does a bootstrap value assess ?
Reliability of internal nodes in a phylogenetic tree
How do you collapse a tree ?
By deleting branches with a bootstrap value of less than 50 thus causing polytomies
What is reticulate evolution ?
Network like evolution that cannot be modelled by a bifurcating tree.
What are the 8 processes support reticulate evolution
Recombination Hybridisation Polyploidy - Multiplication of chromosomes Introgression Genome fusion - Conjugation of cells Endosymbiosis HGT Incomplete lineage sorting
What is introgression ?
Back-crossing of a hybrid with one of the parental species leading to some genes being fixed in the parental .
What is an example of introgression ?
Used to explain the evolution of modern humans
What is an example (not real life) of reticulate evolution ?
An OTU arising from a recombination of 2 species that have arose from a common ancestor
What is incomplete lineage sorting ?
occurs when polymorphisms persist between speciation
events, so that the actual (true) genealogical relationship of a gene or genome region differs from the true
species branching pattern.