BSC 116 Chapter Notes - Chapter 26: Common Descent, Polyphyly, Maximum Likelihood Estimation
19 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Phylogeny- the evolutionary history of a species or group of species. Systematics- a discipline focused on classifying organisms and determining their evolutionary relationships. Taxonomy- the scientific discipline of how organisms are named and classified: to avoid ambiguity when communicating about their research, biologists refer to organisms by latin scientific names. The branching pattern often matches how taxonomists have classified groups of organisms nested within more inclusive groups. Often depicted as a series of dichotomies, or two-way branch points. Each branch point represents the divergence of two evolutionary lineages from a common ancestor. Signifies that evolutionary relationships among the taxa are not yet clear. We should not assume that a taxon on a phylogenetic tree evolved from the taxon next to it. Phylogenetic trees are also used to infer species identities by analyzing the relatedness of dna sequences from different organisms. Section 26. 2: phylogenies are inferred from morphological and molecular data.
