Phylogeny and the Tree of Life Lecture Review

A collection of flashcards to help review key concepts from the lecture on phylogeny and the tree of life.

What is phylogeny?

Phylogeny is the evolutionary history of a species or group of related species.

What is the purpose of phylogenetic trees?

Phylogenetic trees show the evolutionary relationships among organisms, depicting relatedness and descent.

Who created the binomial nomenclature system?

Carolus Linnaeus created the binomial nomenclature system for naming species.

What does the first letter of the genus in a binomial name represent?

The first letter of the genus is always capitalized in a binomial name.

What is a shared ancestral character?

A shared ancestral character is a character that originated in an ancestor of the taxon studied.

How do homology and analogy differ?

Homology is similarity due to shared ancestry, while analogy is similarity due to convergent evolution.

What is the three-domain system?

The three-domain system consists of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya.

What does the term 'monophyletic group' mean?

A monophyletic group, also called a clade, includes an ancestor and all its descendants.

How does adaptive radiation occur?

Adaptive radiation occurs when diversely adapted species rapidly evolve from a common ancestor.

What is horizontal gene transfer?

Horizontal gene transfer is the movement of genes between different organisms, complicating evolutionary relationships.