Biological Aspects Of The Evolution - Case Study Example

Biological Aspects Of The Evolution The topic of interest in this paper is evolutionary relationship of fish. Figure 1 below is a visual of a fish phylogenetic tree. Fig. 1+ I can interpret this visual by looking at a common aspect that connects the organisms from one level of development to the next. One perspective of interpreting this phylogenetic tree is the use of character to define the relationships amongst the organisms. One trait character is used on each developmental stage to make it easy to comprehend and support the evolutionary relationships.

The character is either derived or ancestral that makes up each species. The ancestral character is normally inherited from a distant ancestor while the derived character is one that has experienced fresh evolutionary transformation in a group. The derived characters are employed to classify species that share the trait together to signify that a common contemporary ancestor had similar traits. The sharks share a common character with the rest of the organism in the tree, which is a vertebrae.

This implies that all animals in the phylogenetic tree are vertebrae. The second trait that is found in all the animals except the shark is a bony skeleton that developed in Phase 2 of the tree. This makes the shark different from the other organisms. At level 3, the specific trait that is shared amongst the rest of animals is four limbs. Therefore, ray-finned fish are separated from the other animals at this stage of growth. At the development stage, 4 the common trait is an amniotic egg that is present in the remaining species.

At level 5, the derived character that makes primates, rodents and rabbits to be distinct is the existence of hair. The crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds, have one trait, which is two post-orbital fenestrae (University of California Museum of Paleontology, 2011).In conclusion, transformation in character happen in a period where traits may be acquired or become extinct.  ReferenceUniversity of California Museum of Paleontology. (2011, March 25). Intro BiologyBIOL153Biology Department, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Retrieved June 23, 2015, from http://bcrc.bio.umass.edu/intro/content/phylogeneticsmorphology-protocol