ENTM 506

Collecting, comparing, discovering, naming, and describing species.

arranging species into hierachical systems by determining relationships through comparing and cladistics.

• hypothesizing historical biogeography and ecological evolution from cladistics-based patterns.
• ex: where did something come from, and where did it go

Preparing keys, manuals, and atlases for species and higher groupings.

• identification services
• environmental inventories at different levels
• managing and curating collections and museums
• establishing distribution patterns of species
• determining rarity and endangerment of species
• teaching

grouping of related organisms recognized at some hierarchical level.

simply a particular level of hierarchy.

• -oidea
• ex: ephemera...ephemeroidea

• -idae
• ex: ephemeridae

• -inae
• ex: ephemerinae

• -ini (fairly common)
• ex: ephemerina

-ina (convention, not rule...very rarely used)

Determining common ancestry

• establish characters (like genotype and phenotype).
• this will establish what is to be the natural grouping.

• Describe the variablility found among the characters
• also called character states
• ex: present or not present, just one or two

• determine which of the character states is most likely the ancesteral state vs. the derived state.
• this is known as character polarity

• unique characters
• found among some portion of the study units in the study group

code the characters and states and establish their distribution among already existing groups.

group any synapomorphies (common derived character states) together

construct a family tree (cladogram) that illustrates the branching relationships

• based on cladistic derived data
• made up of only holophyletic groupings

Contains ALL progeny from an immediate common ancestor

• contains SOME, but NOT all progeny of an immediate common ancestor
• not allowed in pylogenetic classification

• Contains progeny of different immediate anscestors
• Not allowed in phylogenetic classification.