Understanding Phylogenetic Trees and Understanding evolution
These days i am mostly into understanding the various aspects of evo devo and for this i am trying to read loads of articles.Things will be fine for me till i encounter a phylogenetic tree ,which is not an easy thing to understand if you are new to this field.No way you can bypass phylogenetic trees in the field of evolution as it forms the heart of the subject.Initially it was very torturous to read this confusing trees but things slowly getting better with discussion (with my friends) and reading more stuff about understanding phylogenetic trees. Internet is really a great thing with wealth of knowledge in every field you desire and one could find some very good sites to learn evolution also, which i want to share with all the people who want to learn about evolution like me.
A phylogenetic tree is a graphical representation of the evolutionary relationship between taxonomic groups.The term phylogeny refers to the evolution or historical development of a plant or animal species, or even a human tribe or similar group.
Taxonomy is the system of classifying plants and animals by grouping them into categories according to their similarities. A phylogenetic tree is a specific type of cladogram where the branch lengths are proportional to the predicted or hypothetical evolutionary time between organisms or sequences. Cladograms are branched diagrams, similar in appearance to family trees, that illustrate patterns of relatedness where the branch lengths are not necessarily proportional to the evolutionary time between related organisms or sequences.
Bioinformaticians produce cladograms representing relationships between sequences, either DNA sequences or amino acid sequences. However, cladograms can rely on many types of data to show the relatedness of species. In addition to sequence homology information, comparative embryology, fossil records and comparative anatomy are all examples of the types of data used to classify species into phylogenic taxa. So, it is important to understand that the cladograms generated by bioinformatics tools are primarily based on sequence data alone. Given that, it is also true that sequence relatedness can be very powerful as a predictor of the relatedness of species.
Source:CNX
There were many nice sites but i will mention only few good ones.The best one is undoubtedly the one created by University of Berkeley “UNDERSTANDING BIOLOGY“.The caption for thier site is “YOUR ONE STOP SOURCE FOR INFORMATION ON EVOLUTION” which i must say is really true.Great site indeed for teachers and beginners of evolution.
For in depth Bioinormatics for generating Phylogenic Trees you can see Phylodendron and also Phylogeny 1: Phylogenetic trees
Hope these things might be useful to you as they were for me.Good luck for your course in Evolution.
Update :
To understand How to read phylogenetic trees , don’t forget to read this fantastic article
Understanding evolutionary trees.
Gregory, T.R. 2008b.
Evolution: Education and Outreach 1: 121-137.
Related Posts:
If you liked what you just read, you may want to subscribe to my
RSS FEED
Thanks for visiting!
Leave your response!