NEET BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -By depicting these relationships, cladograms reconstruct the evolutionary history (phylogeny) of the taxa. Cladograms can also be called “phylogenies” or “trees”. Cladograms are constructed by grouping organisms together based on their shared derived characteristics.

Detailed explanation-2: -The characteristics used to create a cladogram can be roughly categorized as either morphological (synapsid skull, warm blooded, notochord, unicellular, etc.) or molecular (DNA, RNA, or other genetic information). Prior to the advent of DNA sequencing, cladistic analysis primarily used morphological data.

Detailed explanation-3: -A cladogram will begin by grouping organisms based on a characteristic displayed by all the members of the group. Subsequently, the larger group, or clade, will contain increasingly smaller groups (clades) that share the traits of the clades before them, but also exhibit distinct changes as the organism evolves.

Detailed explanation-4: -Cladograms reconstruct evolutionary history by grouping organisms based on shared, morphological characteristics. Organisms are arranged in such a way that each clade shares common traits or characteristics not shared with other clades that are monophyletic because they are only composed of a specific type of organism.

Detailed explanation-5: -Cladograms are diagrams that show phylogenies, the evolutionary relationships between organisms. In this introductory example of cladogram construction, students use observable traits of animals as a line of empirical evidence supporting the common ancestry among the animals.