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Quiz
QUIZ
1. The naming convention used to describe a specific organism or group of organisms most refers to what?
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a. Cladistics b. Phylogenetic tree c. Phylogeny d. Taxonomy
Answer: d. Taxonomy refers specifically to the naming convention used to describe specific organisms based on their shared characteristics.
a. Clade b. Phylogenetic branch c. Taxonomic classification d. Phylogenetic organization
Answer: a. A clade is a group of living things that share a common ancestor. Cladistics is the study of these types of relationships.
3. What was the first taxonomic systems in the world used to describe?
a. Subtypes of animals b. Subtypes of fish c. Subtypes of microorganisms d. Subtypes of plants
Answer: d. The ancient Egyptians used rudimentary taxonomy to try to identify subclassifications of medicinal plants.
4. Aristotle was able to make broad strokes in dividing living things in Ancient Greece. What were the two main classifications of organisms he developed?
a. Crustaceans and non-crustaceans b. Plants and animals c. Egg layers and non-egg layers d. Cold-blooded and warm-blooded
Answer: b. Aristotle did a great deal to understand the taxonomic relationships between living things, ultimately dividing living things into two large groups: plants and animals.
5. What is most true of phylogenetic trees?
a. They are rooted and show a common ancestor to all life forms. b. They are not always accurate because of things like hybridization and horizontal gene transfer. c. They can tell about how long ago the different nodes on the tree broke off from one another. d. They are more like a network rather than any type of tree formation.
Answer: b. Phylogenetic trees are not very accurate because even unrelated organisms can share genetic characteristics because of things like hybridization and horizontal gene transfer.
6. Similar traits between species that arise from the same common trait in an ancestor are called what?
a. Homologous traits b. Analogous traits c. Derived traits d. Ancestral traits
Answer: a. Homologous traits are similar traits between species that come from the same common trait in an ancestor.
7. In a clade, what term represents the characteristic that does not define a clade because they are not shared by members of the clade?
Answer: b. An autapomorphy is a trait in a clade member that is unique to an organism because it does not relate to what the major similarities are within a clade.
8. A trait that is the same in two organisms as being the same but was not actually inherited by a common ancestor is called what?
Answer: d. A homoplasy is a trait that two modern descendants had but that was not inherited by a common ancestor. An example is warmbloodedness, which is seen in birds and humans but is not because they share a common ancestor.
9. What is the current type of molecule looked at in terms of identifying the phylogenetics of an organism?
a. DNA b. Proteins c. Carbohydrates d. Lipids
Answer: d. Earlier studies used chromatography of things like proteins and carbohydrates to identify phylogeny. Nowadays, DNA sequencing is used to make these determinations.
10. Which statement is not true about molecular phylogenetics in the determination of an organism’s phylogeny?
a. The entire DNA genome of the organisms is used to make this determination. b. Similar DNA sequences can help to identify a clade. c. The percent divergence is the difference in DNA base pairs or number of substitutions that have happened over time. d. Key segments of DNA are evaluated across different organisms.
Answer: a. Each of these statements is true except for the statement that entire DNA genomes are used. This would be expensive and time consuming; it is not necessary to do this either.
