Exam 24: Systematic Biology: Phylogeny and Classification

Turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodilians, and birds descended most recently from an ancestral ____.

The principle of parsimony ____ for constructing the phylogenetic tree that represents the smallest number of evolutionary changes.

What are molecular clocks? How they can be used to estimate the time of evolutionary divergences?

Crocodilians are classified as reptiles; however, they share a common ancestor with birds, which are not classified as reptiles. Therefore, Reptilia is a ____ taxon.

A molecular clock is based on ____.

Which traits were originally used for classifying organisms into taxonomic categories?

Homarus americanus and Bufo americanus are ____ because ____.

Figure 24.3 -Answer the question using the accompanying figure. In the figure, letter B represents a ____ taxon, which includes ____.

The class Reptilia is a group of species that share a common ancestor and some, but not all of its descendants. It is therefore considered ____.

Which pair of traits is homologous?

Ferns comprise a good outgroup of the vascular plant phylogenetic tree because they share all of the same derived character states as the ingroup.

According to the convention for properly writing Latin binomials, the scientific name for modern human beings should be written as ____.

Which domain(s) consist(s) of prokaryotic organisms?

The ____ is a bone in the middle ear of tetrapod vertebrates that evolved from, and is therefore ____to, the hyomandibula in early fishes.

The Hominidae taxon includes ____.

Mammalia, the taxon that includes all mammals, is ____ because all mammals are the descendants of a common ancestor.

The traditional kingdom Monera is now divided into two domains, Archaea and Bacteria.