Cladogram Workshop

Teacher: Gina López |Student: Manuela Guerra Abril |Grade: 9-1| Date: November/ 21 st/2019|

In this document, we are going to proceed analyzing 2 different types of cladograms, taking into
account the indications given during the biology classes.

First cladogram
In this first cladogram (above) we can see that there’s a common ancestor (the amoeba)
from which the rest of the organism shown have been derived or in another way, evolved.
This process is called speciation. In this specifically case the ancestor remains during all
the speciation process.
The cladograms relate specific characteristics to a specie or family but joining them all
together in a common evolutionary line. As we can see here, both the amoeba and the cat
are related but they are differenced by the diverse specific characteristics that every
organism between them has carried with themselves to the evolutionary process. In this
way every new characteristic in the line (from left to right) It is characteristic of the
organisms that are positioned directly above it and the ones that are at the right if it is the
case.
Ok, but how does this apply on this cladogram?
It is very simple, as we can see the amoeba is the common ancestor which has a
characteristic (being eukaryotic) therefore all the organism at the right of it (the sponge,
the earthworm, the salmon, the lizard and the cat) are eukaryotic too.
Following this sequence, the sponge (which is multicellular) introduces this new
characteristic (multicellularism) to the evolutionary line but ATTENTION Just to the
organism that follow it to the right! not to the amoeba that is in the left, why? because as
we had explained before the speciation has the function to introduce new organism to the
evolutionary process with new specifically characteristics but not totally isolated from its
ancestor.
Now that we have clear this, we can continue doing the analysis of the cladogram
following the sequence until the last organism that shows the diagram, which in turn is
the last one from the evolutionary process shown and presents all the characteristics
given. (the cat)
Finally, as we can see at the top of the cladogram there are a kind of rectangles enclosing
the organism, these shapes are not randomly placed there, they represent the clades that
the evolution process has formed itself by “filter” the species shown by its characteristics.

*Clades: a group of organisms believed to comprise all the evolutionary descendants of

a common ancestor
So, for example the rectangle that covers all the species, is the clade of the eukaryotic
organisms, but the one that just covers the kangaroo and the cat represent the hairy
animals.
The characteristic of the clade will be the one that has the first organism inside it from left
to right.
Example
Clade of the multicellular organisms (It begins by the sponge which introduces this
characteristic).

Second cladogram
Now let’s see a variant of the cladogram
In this case we have the same structure from the last cladogram, it can be analyzed in the same
way that the last one, with the only difference that it doesn’t have graphed the clades and most
importantly there’s one characteristic that doesn’t appear on the main evolutionary line but on
an alternate one.

What does it mean?

That there was a specie which appeared after the amphibians which had amniotic eggs as
new characteristic but at the same time it gave place to 2 new species with hair as
characteristic turning into its common ancestor.
The primates, rodents and rabbits as we know are mammals so they won’t lay eggs,
because of that they couldn’t be over the main evolutionary line and they were positioned
after an organism from it that gave place to the hair characteristic that finally originated
these two species.