BSC 2010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 35: Tetrapod, Synapomorphy, Symplesiomorphy

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Biology - Biological Sciences
• Course: BSC 2010
• Professor: Chen Sixue

Document Summary

Read phylogenic trees of various types to understand the patterns of relatedness between taxa they depict. Discuss linnaean vs. cladistics classification, and identify monophyletic, paraphyletic, and polyphyletic groups. All life on earth is related through a common ancestor. Phylogenetic trees: a diagrammatic reconstruction of these relationships between species, shows the branching of species from the common ancestor, can take many forms. What matters are the relationships between the taxa: taxon any species or group of species that we designate with a name. Plural is taxa: a record of past speciation events, that show relationships and traits between related populations during evolution. The root of a phylogenetic tree is the common ancestor of all of the organisms: each node represents a speciation event. Nodes are where the lineage splits: branch length tells us about time, the longer the branch the longer ago it occurred.