Clades research task

Objectives:
 Describe what clades are and how they can be used
 Analyse cladograms to deduce evolutionary relationships
 Reclassify the figwort family

Research Questions:
1. What is a clade?
A group of organisms believed to comprise all the evolutionary descendants of a common
ancestor.

2. How are clades deduced?

Comparing base or Amino Acid sequences.

3. What are molecular clocks? Explain how they are used.

Measures the number of changes/mutations which accumulate in the gene sequences of
different species over time. It is used to put a series of evolutionary events in chronological
order.

4. Look at the graph below. It shows the number of nucleotide substitutions between a number of
organisms and a common ancestor between them. Explain what it is showing. Deduce what sort
of organism the common ancestor is likely to be.

5. What are homologous traits (include examples)?

Traits that are similar to one another due to shared ancestry with different functions.
(Pentadactyl limb)
6. What are analogous traits (include examples)?

Traits similar in function and superficial resemblance but from different ancestors. (Wings of
a fly and a bird)

7. Why did these 2 types of traits lead to mistakes in classification in the past?

Closely related organisms can exhibit very different structural features due to adaptive
radiation (e.g. pentadactyl limb). Distantly related organisms can display very similar
structural features due to convergent evolution

8. Why is it better to use base or amino acid sequences to classify?

Evidence for which species are part of a clade can be obtained from the base sequence of a
gene or the corresponding amino acid sequence of a protein.

9. What are cladograms?

A branching diagram showing the cladistic relationship between a number of species.

10. Insert a diagram of a cladogram

11. What are nodes?

The nodes on the trees indicate the common ancestors of descendants.

12. On your cladogram label the following

a. At least 2 nodes
b. A large clade
c. A small clade
d. A common ancestor between 2 clades
e. A species that is extinct today

13. How are extinct species distinguished from a cladogram?

Some cladograms omit them but when shown they have thinner/less visible lines.

14. What is ‘Phylogenetics’?

The study of evolutionary relationships among biological entities.

15. Some cladograms have numbers. What do these numbers represent?

They represent the number of evolutionary changes that had to occur in that branch from the
ancestral form.

16. How can these numbers be used (what is the assumption)?

The species with the least number of characteristics in common will represent the outgroup
(establishes baseline properties).

17. Why do we have to be careful when using these numbers on cladograms?

The number next to each node, in red, above, represent a measure of support for the node.
These are generally numbers between 0 and 1 (but may be given as percentages) where 1
represents maximal support.

18. Cladistics has caused a revolution in plant and animal classification. It has led to large amount of
reclassification. This has caused some groups to merge, some to divide, and some species to be
transferred. Briefly explain how the development of cladistics has led to the reclassification of
the figwort family of angiosperms.

Through DNA sequencing of three chloroplast genes, researchers were able to determine that there
were significant differences in lineage. Therefore, the entire figwort family was reclassified into six
families. However, no classification is ever complete or universally accepted and more refinements
are likely in the future.

19. Insert a cladogram to show primate evolution