BIO153 Winter 2025 Test Practice

Lectures 1 - 6 practice question set
1. What are the three Domains of life? Draw a phylogenetic tree representing the relationships
of these domains.
2. What is a photoautotroph? What is a chemoheterotroph? Give some examples of these
organisms (give general groups of organisms, don't need to give independent species). Then,
describe the carbon cycle / food chain using these concepts.
3. What is a prokaryote? What is a eukaryote? Give examples of these organisms.
4. What is the binomial nomenclature? Look up a couple of organisms and write their binomial
names.

Ans: The naming of organisms using the last 2 taxa in the classification which are the Genus and species.

5. Describe the hierarchical system used to classify organisms (the one which begins with
'Domain).

Ans: Domain, kingdom, Phylum, class, order, family, genus, species

6. Taxonomy, phylogeny, cladistics; these terminologies are related to each other. Define these
terms with their relationships in mind.

Ans:

Taxonomy is the classification of organisms; phylogeny is the study of the evolutionary relationships among these organisms; cladistics focuses on the relationships between grouped organisms based on shared characteristics.

7. What are mammals, and what are the major groups of mammals? Then, use the Australian mole and the North American mole as an example to describe the difference between homologous and analogous traits.

Ans: Marsupials, placentals and Monotreme

8. Draw a phylogenetic tree using the following organisms: Bird, Bat, Butterfly. Then, use the
tree to describe the difference between homologous traits and analogous traits.
9. How do you interpret phylogenetic trees? What do they mean, and what do they not mean?
10. What makes a certain 'trait' of an organism good for building phylogenetic trees? How do
you tell apart a good trait and a bad trait?
11. Describe the different types of homologous genes which a molecular taxonomist may use to
build phylogenetic trees. Which type of homologous genes should be used?
12. Different homologous genes evolve at different speeds. How is this important when a
molecular taxonomist builds phylogenetic trees using these genes?
13. What do you mean when a scientists resolve a phylogenetic tree using maximum
parsimony?
14. What is the difference between a phylogram and a cladogram?

2
15. Draw a phylogenetic tree which contains:
• A root
• A basal taxa
• A lot of groups of organisms, diverging in dichotomy
• At least one polytomy
16. In the phylogenetic tree you drew for question 15,
• Identify a monophyletic group
• Identify a paraphyletic group
• Identify a polyphyletic group
• (Draw a para/poly-phyletic group in your tree if you there weren't good examples in the
original drawing)
17. Repeat Question 15 and 16 many times.
Table 1.
Tract C Trait E Trait A Trait B Trait D
Species 4 1 1 0 1 1
Species 2 1 0 0 1 0
Species 1 1 1 0 1 0
Species 3 0 0 0 0 0
Species 5 0 0 0 1 0
Species 6 1 1 1 1 1
18. Draw a phylogenetic tree using the character table shown in Table 1.
• What is the outgroup used to construct this tree?
• What is the ingroup?
• Which species is the basal taxon in the phylogenetic tree?
• Which species is the sister taxa of species 4?
• If species 4 and 6 were put in a clade, which species is the sister taxa for this clade?

3
Table 2.
Species A Species D Species B Species C Species E Species F
Trait 2 1 0 0 1 1 1
Trait 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
Trait 4 1 0 1 1 1 1
Trait 5 1 0 0 1 0 0
Trait 3 1 0 0 1 0 1
19. Draw a phylogenetic tree using the character table shown in Table 2.
• What is the outgroup used to construct this tree?
• What is the ingroup?
• Which species is the basal taxon in the phylogenetic tree?
• On this tree, where did 'Trait 2' evolve? In another words, in which common ancestor
did 'Trait 2' evolve? Identify the monophyletic clade which have this ancestor as their
common ancestor.