Phylogenetics
The main method we have been using to build our phylogenetic trees.
What is Maximum Parsimony?
All living species are descended from a shared ancestor
What is Common Ancestry?
Smaller changes within species evident over the short term.
What is Microevolution?
Evolution of substantial phenotypic change over the long term.
What is Macroevolution?
The first comprehensive theory of evolution, how new species came about
What is Spontaneous Generation?
The principle of choosing the simplest, most parsimonious tree.
What is Occam's Razor?
This ultimate source of all brand-new genetic variation occurs due to random errors during DNA replication
What is a Mutation?
Whales have remnants of leg bones in their skeleton. These are known as...
What are Vestigial structures?
Evolution of reproductive isolation within an ancestral species, resulting in 2 or more descendant species
What is Speciation?
Lamarck is best known for his evolutionary theories on this African animal
What is a giraffe?
The method of tree building by grouping by overall similarity
What are Distance methods?
Formation of a new species via a splitting event
What is Cladogenesis?
Formation of a new species without a splitting event
What is Anagenesis?
This pattern happens when unrelated species evolve similar traits because they adapt to similar ecological environments (e.g., the streamlined bodies of sharks and dolphins).
What is convergent evolution?
This man developed the key tenets of Evolution by Natural Selection with his partner Wallace
Who is Darwin?
It's difficult to build phylogenies using these because they are not available for most fossils.
What are Molecular characters?
A similarity that exists across species because they share a common ancestor
What is Homology?
This is another common name for selective breeding, where humans, not nature, choose which plants or animals get to reproduce.
What is Artificial Selection?
This early mammal looked like a land-walking wolf or dog, but its ear bones matched those of modern whales, showing how ocean mammals moved back into the water. This is an example of...
What are Transitional Forms?
The first Darwinian tenet of natural selection.
What is Species change through time?
Re-sample the matrix columns with replacement, rebuild the tree for each new alignment.
What is Bootstrapping?
The ability of an individual to produce offspring relative to other individuals in a population.
What is Relative Fitness?
This random mechanism changes allele frequencies purely by chance, and it has a much more drastic impact on small populations
What is Genetic Drift?
Fossil and living forms from the same geographic area resemble each other more than they resemble forms from other areas.
What is the Law of Succession?
The second Darwinian postulate of natural selection
What is Species are related by common ancestry?