Question

Consider this hypothetical: you are studying the 6 species of colonial bats of Texas. The assumption has been that these 6 species descended from one common ancestor that arrived in the American Southwest roughly 6 million years ago. However, after careful study of their morphology, you have reason to believe that three of them belong to three separate South American genera. How could you use phylogenetic analysis to test your hypothesis? What data could you use? What would the tree look like if your hypothesis is correct?

Answer 1

Ans:Character based (discrete) methods, in this method tree is constructed by various possible pathways of evolution. This method uses each alignment position as evolutionary information to build a tree.

here we used the derived characters of the 6 species of colonial bats of Texas .

firstly we arranged the data of the six species according to the characters. Suppose if we separate the species according to the arrangement of characters(traits) then we put marks in the front for the particular character and put negative marks for character in the table in this way we arrange the data of some characters of the species of the bats.

species which has the least number of traits ,probably the oldest and rest of the species of bat evolved from this .put the common traits number at the base of the oldest species .Again select the species with least number of traits and draw a branch line from the common ancestor lineage. In above example three species are separated among the other ,where different node arise and all these having few common characters.

In this tree arrangement of the species always proceed from past to present, terminal nodes shows the recently evolved organisms.

Above example shows the rooted common ancestor here,WAGNER METHOD used .

tree gives a branching pattern according to the closest traits or distinct triats.