LibGuides: VCE Biology Unit 4: Relatedness of species

Online Resources

Trait Evolution on a Phylogenetic Tree: Relatedness, Similarity, and the Myth of Evolutionary Advancement
What do phylogenetic trees illustrate? These diagrams don't just organize knowledge of biodiversity - they also show us that living species are the summation of their evolutionary history.
Phylogenetic trees
What a phylogenetic tree is. How to read phylogenetic trees and determine which species are most related.
Cladogram
A cladogram is a diagram used to represent a hypothetical relationship between groups of animals, called a phylogeny. ..
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Some cladograms show evolutionary time through the scale of the lines, longer lines meaning more time
Cladograms and Phylogenetic Trees
Both cladograms and phylogenetic trees show relationships among organisms, how alike, or similar, they might be
Phylogeny and Cladistics
Introduces classifications where organisms are grouped based on shared characteristics that come from the group's last common ancestor.
African Cichlid Facts
The African cichlids contain some of the most colorful of all freshwater fishes. The cichlids are an enormous family of fish and they offer the widest variety of body shapes and behaviors of all freshwater fishes

Images

Cladogram of whales and the animals they are related to

Online Videos

Hank tells us the background story and explains the importance of the science of classifying living things, also known as taxonomy.

Watch the following lessons:

Phylogenetic trees | Evolution | Khan Academ

Paul Andersen shows you how to construct a cladogram from a group of organisms using shared characteristics. He also discusses the process of parsimony in cladogram construction. He then explains how modern cladograms are constructed and walks through a cladogram of primates.

This video has plenty of hidden gems from start to finish!

News/Researches

Pattern analysis of phylogenetic trees could reveal connections between evolution, ecology
In biology, phylogenetic trees represent the evolutionary history and diversification of species -- the ''family tree'' of Life.
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Phylogenetic trees not only describe the evolution of a group of organisms but can also be constructed from the organisms within a particular environment or ecosystem, such as the human microbiome. In this way, they can describe how this ecosystem evolved and what its functional capabilities might be.
The fishy mystrey of lake Malawi
Cichlid
The cichlid species flocks of the great East African lakes represent the most diverse assemblages of freshwater fishes in the world.
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Lake Tanganyika is by far the oldest of the three major East African rift lakes with an estimated age of about 9 to 12 million years
Why one lake contains more than 1000 species of the same fish
More than 1000 closely related but different species of cichlid fish live in Lake Malawi in south-east Africa – more than in any other lake in the world.
Colour variation in cichlid fish: Developmental mechanisms, selective pressures and evolutionary consequences☆
Darwin’s finch beaks, Bmp4, and the developmental origins of novelty
Reports on the role of the growth factor Bmp4 during the evolution in the beak morphology of Darwin's finches on the Galápagos Islands.
How the development of skulls and beaks made Darwin's finches one of the most diverse species
Darwin's finches are among the most celebrated examples of adaptive radiation in the evolution of modern vertebrates and now a new study has provided fresh insights into their rapid development and evolutionary success.

Revision/ Quizzes

Phylogeny review
Phylogeny
Practice Phylogeny
Taxonomy review questions
Taxonomy in Biology Questions and Answers

VCE Biology Unit 4: Relatedness of species