Systematics and Primate Clades Flashcards
the discipline within biology that is concerned with:
- inferring the evolutionary relationships among organisms
- organizing and naming taxa
systematics
inferring the evolutionary relationships among organisms
phylogeny reconstruction
organizing and naming taxa
classification
- classifies species based on overall similarity
- not concerned with phylogeny
- earliest approach, now lesscommon
phenetics
- classifies species based on phylogeny only
- developed in 60s and now dominant
cladistics
- father of taxonomy and systematics
- catalogued nature
- developed systema naturae
Carolus Linnaeus
the scientific name of a species contains both the genus and species
binomial nomenclature
Exclusively concerned with evolutionary relationships
-evaluates relationships between organisms by examining variation in traits and whether they are shared among multiple groups of organisms, or are unique to a single group
Cladistics
What is the term when an ancestral species and all of its descendent species are nested within larger clades
clades
an ancestral species and some of its descendents
paraphyletic grouping
a group of species but not including the ancestor
polyphyletic grouping
a trait that is found in the last common ancestor of some specified group of taxa and that is expected to be in that ancestor’s descendants
symplesiomorphy
a trait that has changed from the condition seen in the last common ancestor and which is shared among some of its descendants
synapomorphy
a trait that has changed from the condition seen in the last common ancestor and which is not shared among some of its descendants
autapomorphy
similarities between organisms based on descent from a common ancestor
homology
similarities between organisms based strictly on common function, with no assumed common evolutionary descent
analogy
the separate evolutionary development of similar characteristics in different groups of organisms
homoplasy, also called convergent evolution
analysis of molecular differences to gain information about shared evolutionary relationships
molecular phylogenetics
Used to test hypotheses about adaptation
comparative method
