Compare/contrast molecular vs. morphological characters.
Answer:
There are two types of ancestrial trees.
One is the morphological ancestrial tree and the other is the molecular ancestrial tree.
The main focus of the morphological tree is that the morphological tree focuses on the similarity of the anatomical features. This means that species that displays similar anatomical features are more closely related, meaning have branched off most recently. Molecular tree focuses on the similarity of the DNA sequences and the presentation of the molecular features such as similar proteins.
The similarity is that usually the gene expression and the presence of certain proteins are parrellel to the presence of the anatomical feature of the organism. This shows the similarity of the two trees as majority of the classification is similar.
The specificity of the agreement of the morphorlogical and molecular phylogenic tree is that one, all animals share a common ancester; two, sponges are basal animals; three, eumetazoa is a clade of animals with true tissues; four, most animal phyla belong to the clade bilateria; and lastly, chordates and some other phyla belong to the clade deuterostomia.
The differences arise from detailed tree, such as the place of Acoela and other classes of the tree.
The advantages to organizing the species ieven though there are obvious inconsistencies and debates is that by creating a phylogenetic tree and bringing up evidences to prove them true, biologists can catagorize millions of species on Earth.
A lot of species “look either exactly alike or nearly alike.” (Coyne 171). One of the advantages of this, given in the book, is that a specie Anopheles gambiae is one of the species that has 6 other specie that looks similar to. In order to fight the diease, malaria, that is carried within this specie, it is advantageous for a doctor to know where the disease occured because Anopheles gambiae lives in a different niche than other species.
This allows a improved treatment in the medical world. Another reason is because when humans compare two different species, people often makes generalizations about where the species ancestrate from. By creating a phylogenetic tree, this generalizations can be solved, although not completely solved since there are much debates on the completio of the phylogenetic trees.