Phylogenetic Trees Flashcards
1
Q
What is Taxonomy?
A
Naming and Classifying of organisms
2
Q
What is Phylogeny?
A
Building trees that illustrate relationships and estimating time of events
3
Q
What is a Character State?
A
Any comparable Trait
4
Q
When does change in character state influence fitness?
A
Natural Selection
5
Q
When does change in character state not influence fitness?
A
Genetic Drift (random chance)
6
Q
What are Synapomorphies?
A
Shared derived characteristics
7
Q
What are Autapomorphies?
A
Characteristics that are not shared, make a species unique
8
Q
What are Monophyletic Groups?
A
Groups with the same common ancestor
9
Q
What is Homoplasy?
A
Similar structures formed by different developmental pathways–Convergent evolution
10
Q
What is Parsimony?
A
The least complicated solution
11
Q
What are the 7 Problems of Tree Building?
A
- Fossils are hard to read, Scoring character traits is not easy. 2. Homoplasy is common. 3. Ongoing evolution can obscure patterns (not all mutations change protein codes, not all genes evolve at the same time). 4. Rapid evolution prevents synapomorphies from being established. 5. Haplotypes may show incorrect gene information. 6. Hybridization causes net-like trees. 7. Horizontal gene transfer.
