Florida International University

PCB 2061

20.1 - Organizing life on Earth

1)What is phylogeny?

2. What information is provided by phylogenetic relationships?
3. What is a phylogenetic tree?
4. Why is a phylogenetic tree viewed as a hypothesis of the evolutionary past?
5. How is a “tree of life” used?
6. Within a phylogenetic tree, what does a single lineage at the base represent? These trees are called what?
7. How are the three domains seen on a rooted phylogenetic tree?
8. What does the branch that plants and animals occupy in this tree show in relationship to other organisms?
9. What does an unrooted tree show?

10. What does a branch in a rooted tree represent?

11. What is a branch point?
12. What is a basal taxon?
13. What are sister taxa?
14. What is a polytomy and what does it illustrate?
15. How is it that although sister taxa and polytomy do share an ancestor, it does not mean that the groups of organisms split or evolved from each other?
16. How do these diagrams serve as a pathway to understanding evolutionary history?
17. How can you discover the ancestors of a single species?
18. How is it that a rotation at branch points do not change information?
19. What is systematics and from where is data collected?
20. What did the phylogenetic tree show about lizards, rabbits, and frogs?
21. What does it mean when we say the branches do not account for length of time? What does it indicate?
22. What is the science of Taxonomy?
23. What is a hierarchical system?