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Building phylogenetic trees

How do scientists construct phylogenetic trees? Presently, the most accepted method for constructing phylogenetic trees is a method called cladistics    . This method sorts organisms into clades , groups of organisms that are most closely related to each other and the ancestor from which they descended. For example, in [link] , all of the organisms in the shaded region evolved from a single ancestor that had amniotic eggs. Consequently, all of these organisms also have amniotic eggs and make a single clade, also called a monophyletic group    . Clades must include the ancestral species and all of the descendants from a branch point.

Art connection

Illustration shows the V-shaped Vertebrata clade, which includes lancelets, lamprey, fish, lizards, rabbits and humans. Lancelets are at the left tip of the V, and humans are at the right tip. Four more lines are drawn parallel to the lancelet line; each of these lines starts further up the right arm of the V than the next. At the end of each line, from left to right, are lampreys, fish, lizards, and rabbits. Lizards, rabbits and humans, which form a small V nested in the upper right corner of the Vertebrata V, are in the clade Amniota.
Lizards, rabbits, and humans all descend from a common ancestor in which the amniotic egg evolved. Thus, lizards, rabbits, and humans all belong to the clade Amniota. Vertebrata is a larger clade that also includes fish and lamprey.

Which animals in this figure belong to a clade that includes animals with hair? Which evolved first: hair or the amniotic egg?

Clades can vary in size depending on which branch point is being referenced. The important factor is that all of the organisms in the clade or monophyletic group stem from a single point on the tree. This can be remembered because monophyletic breaks down into “mono,” meaning one, and “phyletic,” meaning evolutionary relationship.

Shared characteristics

Cladistics rests on three assumptions. The first is that living things are related by descent from a common ancestor, which is a general assumption of evolution. The second is that speciation occurs by splits of one species into two, never more than two at a time, and essentially at one point in time. This is somewhat controversial, but is acceptable to most biologists as a simplification. The third assumption is that traits change enough over time to be considered to be in a different state .It is also assumed that one can identify the actual direction of change for a state. In other words, we assume that an amniotic egg is a later character state than non-amniotic eggs. This is called the polarity of the character change. We know this by reference to a group outside the clade: for example, insects have non-amniotic eggs; therefore, this is the older or ancestral character state. Cladistics compares ingroups and outgroups. An ingroup (lizard, rabbit and human in our example) is the group of taxa being analyzed. An outgroup (lancelet, lamprey and fish in our example) is a species or group of species that diverged before the lineage containing the group(s) of interest. By comparing ingroup members to each other and to the outgroup members, we can determine which characteristics are evolutionary modifications determining the branch points of the ingroup’s phylogeny.

If a characteristic is found in all of the members of a group, it is a shared ancestral character    because there has been no change in the trait during the descent of each of the members of the clade. Although these traits appear interesting because they unify the clade, in cladistics they are considered not helpful when we are trying to determine the relationships of the members of the clade because every member is the same. In contrast, consider the amniotic egg characteristic of [link] . Only some of the organisms have this trait, and to those that do, it is called a shared derived character    because this trait changed at some point during descent. This character does tell us about the relationships among the members of the clade; it tells us that lizards, rabbits, and humans group more closely together than any of these organisms do with fish, lampreys, and lancelets.

Questions & Answers

A golfer on a fairway is 70 m away from the green, which sits below the level of the fairway by 20 m. If the golfer hits the ball at an angle of 40° with an initial speed of 20 m/s, how close to the green does she come?
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A mouse of mass 200 g falls 100 m down a vertical mine shaft and lands at the bottom with a speed of 8.0 m/s. During its fall, how much work is done on the mouse by air resistance
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Chemistry is a branch of science that deals with the study of matter,it composition,it structure and the changes it undergoes
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2. A sled plus passenger with total mass 50 kg is pulled 20 m across the snow (0.20) at constant velocity by a force directed 25° above the horizontal. Calculate (a) the work of the applied force, (b) the work of friction, and (c) the total work.
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you have been hired as an espert witness in a court case involving an automobile accident. the accident involved car A of mass 1500kg which crashed into stationary car B of mass 1100kg. the driver of car A applied his brakes 15 m before he skidded and crashed into car B. after the collision, car A s
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Nevermind i just realied that the graph is the phons output for a person with normal hearing and not just the phons output of the sound waves power, I should read the entire thing next time
Joseph
Follow up question, does anyone know where I can find a graph that accuretly depicts the actual relative "power" output of sound over its frequency instead of just humans hearing
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"Generation of electrical energy from sound energy | IEEE Conference Publication | IEEE Xplore" ***ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7150687?reload=true
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progressive wave
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A string is 3.00 m long with a mass of 5.00 g. The string is held taut with a tension of 500.00 N applied to the string. A pulse is sent down the string. How long does it take the pulse to travel the 3.00 m of the string?
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Source:  OpenStax, Concepts of biology univ. of west georgia. OpenStax CNX. Jan 03, 2014 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11612/1.1
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