CHAPTER 2: HW 2

Answer the following questions. Use a separate sheet for your answers.
1. What is the purpose of a phylogenetic tree? Why do you think it is helpful for science
and non-science majors to understand the purpose and components of phylogenetic trees?

A phylogenetic tree is an acyclic graph depicting the relationships among multiple genes
or groups of organisms. Scientists consider phylogenetic tree as a hypothesis of the evolutionary
past since one cannot go back to confirm the proposed relationships.

2. What are shared derived characteristics? Give two evolutionary explanations for why
two or more taxa might have shared derived characteristics.

A shared character is one that two lineages have in common, and a derived character is
one that evolved in the lineage leading up to a clade and that sets members of that clade apart
from other individuals.

3. Phylogenetic analysis assumes that evolution can be diagrammed as a branching tree.

What are the two important situations where this assumption does not hold true and how
are they dealt with in a phylogenetics analysis?

The two important situations behind the assumptions are during when the transmission
happened among endosymbiotic gene, prokaryotes and eukaryotes through the process of
transferring organelles. To incorporate such processes as it depicts the picture of an early
evolution, there’s a need to advance from the preconceived notion that all genomes are related by
a single branching tree.

4. Why do ecologists need to be phylogenetically challenged?

It is important to the ecologist to be phylogenetically challenge because through

phylogenetic, ecologist will know the origins and of species, and also increased understanding
the consequences of community interactions for speciation, adaptation and interaction. Ecologist
need to be phylogenetically challenge because numerous patterns in ecology and evolution vary
across the phylogeny. Ecologist must know the effects of phylogenetic scale in the field of
community ecology. Phylogenetic information helps resolve long-standing controversies in
community ecology, challenges previous assumptions, and open new areas of investigation.

5. What does the length of a phylogenetic tree indicate?

The branch length represents the evolutionary time between two nodes in a phylogenetic
tree where in the algorithms tests the strengths of each node. Therefore, if a node is dependent
even in a short then of high similarity, the iterations that remove that region will likely change the
shape of the tree.