Which of the following statements about rooted and unrooted phylogenetic trees is CORRECT?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

To set the stage, recall what rooted and unrooted phylogenetic trees convey about evolutionary relationships.
Option 1: 'Unrooted trees give information about the order of speciation events.' This is misleading because unrooted trees depict relationships or relatedness without specifying a temporal order or direction of descent; they do not encode the sequence of speciation events.
Option 2: 'Rooted trees make no assumptions about ancestry of the species.' In fact, rooted trees explicitly imply a most recent common ancestor and a direction of evolution from that root, so they do carry ancestry assumptions; this statement is incorrect.
Option 3: 'Rooted trees show the most basal ancestor of the tree in question, while unrooted trees only show how the species in the tree are related.' This captures the key distinction: rooting identifies a deepest ancestor (the root) and provides a sense of directionality of evolution, whereas unrooted trees focus on relatedness without inferring a starting point. This option correctly describes the correct conceptual difference.
Option 4: 'The species chosen as the outgroup to root a tree should be a random choice.' In reality, an outgroup should be a carefully chosen lineage that is related but outside the group of interest, not a random pick, because a proper outgroup helps correctly orient the root. This statement is incorrect.

Which of the following statements about rooted and unrooted phylogenetic trees is CORRECT?单项选择题

类似问题

In the following hypothetical tree, identify the sister node(s) of M.

There is more than one correct way to show relationships using a phylogenetic tree. Three of the four trees displayed below show the same relationship between species A, B, and C. Which tree shows a different relationship?

Using the tree below, which letter refers to the most recent common ancestor of green alga and moss?

Which species is closest to C based on the following phylogenetic tree?

Which one of the following statements about the following phylogenetic tree is correct?

According to this figure, chimpanzees are most closely related to ______ .

Nodes in a phylogenetic tree represent:

Which node represents the most recent common ancestor of organisms E and F?

更多留学生实用工具

智能学习助手

风格化写作助手

论文查重助手

文献引用助手

课堂转译助手

课堂笔记助手

Quiz搜索助手

学校历年真题

智能刷题助手

智能匹配练习

希望你的学习变得更简单