Compare and contrast horizontal gene transfer and introgression.

You are a college professor running a systematics lab.  Your grad student found a paper in the literature reporting the phylogeny of her favorite group of organisms, based on gene A.  To verify the published phylogeny, she sequences gene B and gets a slightly different phylogeny.  What are four possible explanations for the difference between her result and the published one?

What does it mean to ‘root’ an unrooted phylogenetic tree, and how would you go about doing this?

According to the tree, which of the following is most closely related to E?

Explain what is meant by ‘character state’ in systematics, and give an example.

Compare and contrast a hard versus a soft polytomy

In a monophyletic genus of 10 species of birds, four have evolved red-colored beaks while the other six have black-colored beaks.  If red beaks evolved independently for each species of the four species, what is the Consistency Index for this trait?

Who is thought to have published the first version of a phylogenetic tree?

Where did the United States become involved in its first “hot war” after World War II?

Which of the following is a group which includes a single common ancestor but not all descendents?