Biology 152: Chapter 2 Tree Thinking

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to phylogenetic trees and evolution.

Clade

All the descendants of an ancestral lineage.

Node

Branching points of tree diagrams, which represent lineage splitting.

Root

The base of a tree, representing the common ancestral lineage of all taxa in the tree.

Speciation

Lineage splitting that ultimately leads to taxa that are classified as separate species.

Phylogenetic Tree

A branching diagram used to represent evolutionary relationships and relatedness between different organisms based on their common ancestry.

Taxon

A named group of biological organisms, often shown at the tips of a tree.

Lineage splitting

A splitting of a population into genetically separate populations that no longer have gene flow.

Tree Thinking

The ability to use the metaphor of a phylogenetic tree to convey accurate evolutionary information.

Tree topology

A list of all the clades that a tree contains.

Branch

The lines that make up a tree diagram, which represent population lineages.