5 Reconstructing Evolutionary Relationships - Adaptation and Biodiversity
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15 Terms
What does echolocation entail?
It entails sending out sonar calls and listening to the echo in order to locate prey. It also requires high frequency hearing, which is made possible via outer hair cells.
What protein contributes to high frequency hearing?
Prestin
Define Systematics.
The study of diversity of organisms.
What do systematics and taxonomy do?
They bring order out of chaos by attempting to arrange groups of organisms according to their evolutionary relationships.
Who developed the idea of phylogenetic systematics?
Willi Hennig
What is phylogenetic systematics?
A method used to reconstruct evolutionary relationships amongst species that share a common ancestor.
What are the assumptions for phylogenetic systematics?
Evolution occurs
There is a single phylogeny of life (all organisms share a common ancestor)
Characteristics are passed on from generation to generation
Define Genealogy.
An ancestor and all its descendants.
Can genealogical relationships amongst groups of organisms be directly observed?
No.
What are phylogenetic trees used for?
They are used to present a hypothesis for the evolutionary relationships among a group of organisms (aka. taxa).
*considered a hypothesis since we can never directly observe the past relationships
Can phylogenetic trees ever be rejected? If so, why?
Yes.
Because new data might disprove it later on.
What are the steps in reconstructing a phylogenetic tree?
Identify homologous characters
Code the characters as ancestral or derived and construct a matrix
Group the organisms by shared derived characters to make a phylogenetic hypothesis
Define Character, in the context of ecology.
An observable trait of an organism.
What is a limitation when constructing phylogenies?
Not all similarities are due to homology. Sometimes its due to convergent evolution. However, scientists tend to ignore that and if there is no contrary evidence, they always assume its homology.