Name: Date:

Student Exploration: Evolution- Cladograms

Directions: Follow the instructions to go through the simulation. Respond to the questions and
prompts in the orange boxes.

Vocabulary:
Vocabulary: Cladograms
1. Adaptation – a change that results in an organism being better suited to its environment.
2. Amino acid – an organic molecule containing a carboxyl and an amino group.
○ Amino acids combine in a long chain to form proteins.
3. Amnion – a membrane that contains the developing embryo of a mammal, bird or reptile.
4. Artiodactyla – an order of even-toed hoofed mammals
○ Sheep, goats, pigs and camels are part of the Artiodactyla group.
5. Bipedal – an animal that uses two legs for walking.
○ Humans, birds, and some other animals are bipedal.
6. Clade – a group of organisms believed to have evolved from the same common ancestor.
○ A clade includes all of the descendants of the common ancestor
○ A group like dinosaurs is not a true clade because it does not include birds, which evolved from
dinosaurs.
7. Cladistics – a method of classification of species based on their morphological or molecular similarity
8. Cladogram – a branching diagram that shows the hypothesized relationship between organisms.
○ The organisms to compare are listed at the top of the cladogram.
○ The nodes of the cladogram represent common ancestors and the branches represent
divergent evolution.
○ In the cladogram at right, the brown bear, giant panda, and red panda all share a common
ancestor at the green node. Then, the ancestors of the brown bear diverged from the ancestors
of both the giant panda and red panda. The giant panda and red panda share a common
ancestor at the orange node.
9. Convergent evolution – the independent evolution of similar traits in more than one lineage.
○ Wing development in birds and bats is an example of convergent evolution.
10. Evolution – change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms that occurs over many
generations.
11. Flower – a specialized, often colorful plant structure that contains the plant’s reproductive organs.
○ After pollination, flowers develop into fruits and seeds.
12. Mammary glands – the milk-producing structures in female mammals.
13. Molecular – relating to molecules, a group of atoms bonded together that represent the smallest unit of
a chemical compound.
14. Morphological – relating to the physical structure of organisms.
15. Multicellular – having more than one cell.
16. Parsimony – a principle that states that the simplest explanation that fits all evidence is most often true.
○ When building a cladogram, the most parsimonious cladogram is the one that requires the
fewest evolutionary changes.
17. Phloem – the vascular tissue in plants that conducts sugar and other metabolites down from the leaves
to the roots.
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18. Sagittal crest – a bony ridge on the top of some mammal skulls to which jaw muscles are attached.
○ Animals with sagittal crests, such as gorillas, usually have very strong jaw muscles.
19. Selenodont teeth – molars that have crescent-shaped ridges on the grinding surface.
○ Ruminant animals, such as cows and deer, often have selenodont teeth.
20. SNP – a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is a difference in a nucleotide in a specific location that
varies among individuals.
○ SNPs are mutations that often don’t have negative effects, so they remain in a population.
○ For example, a cow may have a guanine nucleotide at the 100th position of chromosome 2,
whereas a deer may have an adenine at the same position. If that location is not inside an
essential genetic element, the amino acid change will not have a negative effect on the deer.
○ Similarities and differences in SNPs between species gives clues about their evolutionary
relatedness.
21. Xylem – the vascular tissue of plants that transports water and nutrients up from the roots to the rest of
the plant.

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Prior Knowledge Questions (Do these BEFORE using the Gizmo.)

1. Look at the images below. Which two organisms do you think are most closely related?

Deer and Turtle

Worm Deer Turtle

2. Why do you think so?

They’re more closely related because a worm is an insect and more simple since they have
no bones.

Gizmo Warm-up
Cladistics is a method of hypothesizing the evolutionary relationships between
species. A cladogram is a branching diagram that illustrates these relationships. For
example, the cladogram on the right shows that deer are more closely related to
turtles than to worms. In the Cladograms Gizmo, you will use morphological
(physical characteristics) and molecular data to create cladograms.

To begin, make sure Plants is selected for the Organism group and Morphological is selected for the Data
type. Click on one of the characteristics to the left of the table on the TABLE tab. Information about the
characteristic will be shown on the ORGANISM tab. Using the information on the ORGANISM tab, describe
each of the characteristics below.
● Xylem and phloem: Xylem and phloem are tissues in plants that transport water
and solutes up the plant (xylem) and food down the plant
(phloem).

● Flowers: A flower is the part of a plant that has reproductive organs

(stamen and carpel) surrounded by brightly colored petals.

● Multicellularity: A multicellular organism is composed of more than one cell.

Activity A: Get the Gizmo ready:

Morphological ● Check that Plants and Morphological are still

cladogram selected for the group and data type.

Question: How do you build a simple cladogram based on physical characteristics?

1. Fill in: Using what you learned in the warm-up, fill in the table. Clicking one of the boxes of the table will add
a check mark to indicate the presence of a characteristic. Then, select Check table and adjust any of the
boxes you may have filled in incorrectly.

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 Which organism has the fewest shared characteristics? Algae

2. Organize: Now you are ready to organize the table.

A. How many characteristics (check marks) Algae: 0/3

does each organism have? Drag the arrows Arabidopsis: 3/3
below the table to order the organism Cycad: 2/3
columns from fewest characteristics on the Moss: 1/3
left to most on the right.

B. How many organisms have each Multicellularity: 3/4

characteristic? Drag the arrows to the right
Xylem and phloem: 2/4
of the table to order the characteristics from
fewest organisms on the top to most on the Flowers: 1/4
bottom.

3. Build: Select the CLADOGRAM tab at the top left. The goal of a cladogram is to show the relationships
among a group of organisms. Organisms that are most closely related should share the most recent
common ancestor (highest branch on the tree). Organisms that are most distantly related should share the
oldest common ancestor (lowest branch on the tree).

Click the segments on the cladogram template to build your

own cladogram that shows how you think the different plants
are related.

✏️ Sketch your cladogram in the space to the right.

Answer the following questions based on your cladogram.

A. Which two organisms are most closely related? - Algae and Moss are most closely
related
- Cycad and Arabidopsis are most
closely related

B. Which organisms are most distantly related? Algae and Arabidopsis

4. Analyze: On a completed cladogram, the orange dot that connects two branches
represents a common ancestor. In the cladogram to the right, organisms B and C
descended from a common ancestor (D) that was more recent than the common
ancestor (E) of organisms A, B, and C.

Describe how the organisms in your cladogram are related through common ancestors.

The orange dots represent the common ancestors that connect them. The purple dashes
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 are the physical characteristics (what it looks like) that makes the organisms unique.

5. Label: The purple lines represent a characteristic change, or adaptation. On the cladogram above,
organisms B and C share characteristic 3. Organism B either gained or lost characteristic 1 after diverging
from organism C.

In the Gizmo, select a purple line to open a text box and fill in the characteristics.

Based on your cladogram, from oldest to newest, in what order did the three characteristics (flowers,
multicellularity, and xylem/ phloem) evolve?

Multicellularity > Xylem & Phloem > Flowers

6. Score: The parsimony principle states that the most likely solution is usually the simplest. In general,
biologists try to create cladograms that require the fewest evolutionary changes. For example, it is more
likely that xylem and phloem evolved once rather than multiple times. The “parsimony score” calculates
how many changes occur in a given cladogram.

A. How many changes (purple lines) occurred in your cladogram? 4

B. Select Show parsimony score. What is the score of your 4

cladogram?

C. Select Show best possible parsimony score. Have you created a 4

cladogram with the least number of possible characteristic changes?

7. Revise: If you have not created a cladogram with the lowest possible parsimony score, adjust the
cladogram until you do. Make sure that the organisms are ordered from fewest shared characteristics on
the left to most shared characteristics on the right.

Select Show accepted cladogram. Does your cladogram match the scientifically accepted cladogram?

Yes

📷
Click the camera ( ) to take a Screenshot of your cladogram. Right click the image, select Copy, and
then paste the image into the space below.

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 📷
Activity B: Get the Gizmo ready:
● Select Insects for the organism group and
Cladogram Morphological for the data type.
practice ● Select the ORGANISMS tab.

Introduction: In this activity, you will practice creating larger, more complex cladograms.

Question: How do you create parsimonious cladograms with more complex branching?

1. Build: As you did in activity A, use the information provided to fill in the table of characteristics for insects.
Check that your table is correct. On the CLADOGRAM tab, use your table to create an insect cladogram.
Make adjustments until you achieve the lowest possible parsimony score, and then compare your
cladogram to the accepted cladogram. When you are done, take a snapshot of the cladogram and save it
in your document.

What is the lowest possible parsimony score? 4

Which two insects are most closely related? Beetle DragonFly both go through Larval
Stages

2. Build: Create cladograms for the Primates and Animals groups (skip the
Artiodactyla for now). These cladograms are a little more complex, and you
may have to include multiple branches at the same level, such as in the
example shown at the right. When you have built cladograms with the lowest
possible parsimony score, compare them to the accepted cladogram.

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 Take Screenshots 📷 of the finished cladograms and paste them in the space below.

📷
3. Observe: Sometimes a trait can evolve separately in different groups. For example, both bats and birds
have wings, but their common ancestor did not have wings.

In the Animals cladogram, which trait evolved two different times?

Bipedalism

4. Think and discuss: What could cause similar traits to evolve independently in different species?

Through the process of Convergent evolution, two phylogenetically independent organisms get
to develop similar structures. These structures make possible better performance in a similar
environment. These organisms are morphologically or ethologically similar in their whole bodies
or just in parts.

Species that live in the same environment or face similar threats may need to develop traits that help them
adapt to their situations. For example, hedgehogs and porcupines independently evolved prickly spines to
protect themselves from predators. This process is called convergent evolution, where similar
characteristics evolved in species of different lineages.

Activity C: Get the Gizmo ready:

Molecular ● Select the ORGANISMS tab, Plants, and

cladograms Molecular data.
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Introduction: The creation of cladograms has been improved with the advent of protein and DNA sequencing.
A protein is a sequence of hundreds of amino acids. As organisms evolve, some parts of these sequences
may change as one amino acid is substituted for another. Scientists can count these changes to try to
reconstruct evolutionary relationships. In this activity, you will use protein sequence data to create a cladogram.

Question: How do scientists use molecular data to construct cladograms?

1. Collect data: On the ORGANISMS tab, the amino acid sequences for the protein cytochrome c oxidase in
four plant species are listed. Select the top organism name on the table. Compare the amino acids in that
species to the amino acids in the other three species. If an amino acid does NOT match the amino acid in
the top row, click the box to turn it orange. Mark all of the differences in the entire sequence as you scroll to
the right. Use this data to fill in the table on the TABLE tab.

Press Reset. Select the organism in the second row. Compare the amino acids in this organism to the
other two below. Fill in the table. Continue this process until the table is complete. Select Check table to
make sure the table was filled in correctly.

2. Organize: Look at your table.

A. Which two organisms have the fewest Moss has the fewest differences to
differences? Use the arrows to the right of Cycad and Arabidopsis
the table to drag those two species to the
bottom rows.

B. Which organism is most similar to the two Cycad and Arabidopsis are the most
organisms in part A above? Drag this similar
organism to the second row of the table.

C. Which organism is the most different Algae is different to every other plant
compared to the other three? This organism
should be positioned at the top of the table.

3. Build: Select the CLADOGRAM tab. If you have organized the table
correctly, the species should be organized from least-related on the left
to most-related on the right.
Build a cladogram as you did when
Morphological was selected.
space provided on the right.
✏️
Draw it in the

4. Score: Select Parsimony score and Best possible parsimony score. Did you create the best possible
cladogram? If so, take a Screenshot and add it to your document.

Parsimony score- 44
Best Parsimony score- 44
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5. Organize data: Select Primates. Turn on the Show differences check box and select the top organism in
the table. This will automatically highlight the differences between the other organisms and the one
selected, which will allow you to complete the table more quickly. Fill in the table. Which two species have
the fewest differences?

The Chimp and the Gorilla have the fewest differences.

Drag those two species to the bottom two rows. Of the remaining four species, use the right-most row of
the table to order the species from fewest differences at the bottom to most differences at the top.

6. Build: Build a primates cladogram with the best possible parsimony score. Take a Screenshot of the
cladogram and paste it in the space below. Select Show accepted cladogram.

Parsimony score- 101

Best Parsimony score- 100

Does your cladogram match the accepted cladogram?

There is a small difference where the Chimp and the Human should be connected.

The woolly and howler monkeys are very different from the human and chimp, so they appear at the other
side of the cladogram, but they are very similar to each other so they likely share a more recent common
ancestor. (Both woolly and howler monkeys are “New World” monkeys native to South America.)

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7. Build: Using the same method, create a molecular cladogram for the animal group. When you are done,
take a Screenshot and paste it in the space below.

8. Compare: Compare the molecular cladograms for plants, primates, and animals to the morphological
cladograms. Do these cladograms match? Explain.

They mostly match. There are a few differences.

9. Discuss: How does the molecular data help reinforce the evolutionary relationships you inferred from the
morphological data?

The molecular data makes it easier to identify if one species is more closely related to
another.

Activity D: Get the Gizmo ready:

● Select Artiodactyla and Morphological data.
Rewriting history ● Select the ORGANISMS tab.

Introduction: In some cases, molecular data can give insight into relatedness that morphological data cannot.
That was true for the Artiodactyla, a group of even toed mammals.

Question: Can molecular data create cladograms that are more accurate?

1. Form a hypothesis: Which data type, morphological or molecular, do you think will allow you to create a
more accurate cladogram? Explain.

Both of them are useful because it gives different information on the subject topic which could
be an animal or a plant. Molecular data are data which arise from genetic compositions such as
DNA and protein sequences while morphological data arise from the physical makeup of an
organism.

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2. Build: Create the best possible cladogram using the morphological data. Paste a Screenshot of the
cladogram in the space below.

📷
A. Based on this cladogram, which organism is
most closely related to cow and deer? Why?
deer is closely related to a hippo
because it is closer to it and a cow is
closely related to a whale because it is
also close to it

B. Which organism shares the fewest traits with the hippo

the others?

3. Build: Switch to the Molecular data type. Notice that the molecular data used here are SNPs, or
single-nucleotide polymorphisms. A SNP is a difference in a nucleotide in a specific location of an
organism's DNA that varies among individuals. Create the best possible cladogram. Paste a Screenshot of
the cladogram in the space below.

📷
A. Is this cladogram the same as the molecular cladogram? no

B. How do the two cladograms differ?

4. Compare: Select Show accepted cladogram. Do either of your cladograms match the accepted
cladogram?

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5. Discuss: Where does the whale appear in the molecular cladogram? Is that surprising?

Until recently, scientists used a cladogram based on morphological characteristics similar to the one you
created. A parsimonious morphological cladogram can be created if you assume that selenodont teeth
and three-part stomachs evolved only once.

This is not, however, consistent with the molecular data. Based on this data, whales and hippos are related.
Camels are distantly related to the other artiodactyls and must have evolved multi-part stomachs and
selenodont teeth independently. While it is based on a wealth of molecular data, this new view of
Artiodactyla is still new and somewhat controversial.

6. Create: Select Insects for the Organism group and Molecular for the Data type. As you have done
previously, use the Gizmo to create a parsimonious cladogram.

Is your cladogram equivalent to the accepted cladogram?

In this case, it is ok if your cladogram does not match the accepted cladogram. This Gizmo uses small
numbers of characteristics and short molecular sequences to allow for manageable data analysis. In this
case, the limited amount of molecular data is not enough to sort out a relationship between the different
insect groups.

Scientists must consider many traits and large molecular data sets to create an accurate picture of
evolutionary history. They also must weigh the significance of major evolutionary changes, like skeleton
development, versus less significant changes, like skin color.

7. Discuss: Are molecular or morphological data more useful when creating cladograms? Explain.

8. Think and discuss: What can a scientist do to improve the accuracy of their cladograms?

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 Vocabulary: Cladograms
Adaptation – a change that results in an organism being better suited to its environment.
Amino acid – an organic molecule containing a carboxyl and an amino group.
○ Amino acids combine in a long chain to form proteins.
Amnion – a membrane that contains the developing embryo of a mammal, bird or reptile.
Artiodactyla – an order of even-toed hoofed mammals
○ Sheep, goats, pigs and camels are part of the Artiodactyla group.
Bipedal – an animal that uses two legs for walking.
○ Humans, birds, and some other animals are bipedal.
Clade – a group of organisms believed to have evolved from the same common ancestor.
○ A clade includes all of the descendants of the common ancestor
○ A group like dinosaurs is not a true clade because it does not include birds, which evolved from
dinosaurs.
Cladistics – a method of classification of species based on their morphological or molecular similarity
Cladogram – a branching diagram that shows the hypothesized relationship between organisms.
○ The organisms to compare are listed at the top of the cladogram.
○ The nodes of the cladogram represent common ancestors and the branches represent
divergent evolution.
○ In the cladogram at right, the brown bear, giant panda, and red panda all share a common
ancestor at the green node. Then, the ancestors of the brown bear diverged from the ancestors
of both the giant panda and red panda. The giant panda and red panda share a common
ancestor at the orange node.
Convergent evolution – the independent evolution of similar traits in more than one lineage.
○ Wing development in birds and bats is an example of convergent evolution.
Evolution – change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms that occurs over many generations.
Flower – a specialized, often colorful plant structure that contains the plant’s reproductive organs.
○ After pollination, flowers develop into fruits and seeds.
Mammary glands – the milk-producing structures in female mammals.
Molecular – relating to molecules, a group of atoms bonded together that represent the smallest unit of a
chemical compound.
Morphological – relating to the physical structure of organisms.
Multicellular – having more than one cell.
Parsimony – a principle that states that the simplest explanation that fits all evidence is most often true.
○ When building a cladogram, the most parsimonious cladogram is the one that requires the
fewest evolutionary changes.
Phloem – the vascular tissue in plants that conducts sugar and other metabolites down from the leaves to the
roots.
Sagittal crest – a bony ridge on the top of some mammal skulls to which jaw muscles are attached.
○ Animals with sagittal crests, such as gorillas, usually have very strong jaw muscles.
Selenodont teeth – molars that have crescent-shaped ridges on the grinding surface.
○ Ruminant animals, such as cows and deer, often have selenodont teeth.
SNP – a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is a difference in a nucleotide in a specific location that varies
among individuals.
○ SNPs are mutations that often don’t have negative effects, so they remain in a population.
○ For example, a cow may have a guanine nucleotide at the 100th position of chromosome 2,
whereas a deer may have an adenine at the same position. If that location is not inside an
essential genetic element, the amino acid change will not have a negative effect on the deer.
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 ○ Similarities and differences in SNPs between species gives clues about their evolutionary
relatedness.
Xylem – the vascular tissue of plants that transports water and nutrients up from the roots to the rest of the
plant.

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