Imagine that you are studying alien life-forms discovered on a distant planet. While geneticists are working out the genetic code of these organisms, you are asked to construct a phylogenetic tree based on four morphological features, or characters: presence or absence of a spring tail, presence or absence of a grasping hand, presence or absence of a second tail, and number of eyes. The organisms have been divided into five groups based on these characters.
If we assume the alien with a tail stalk is an outgroup, what is the most likely phylogenetic tree based on these shared derived characters? When did these characters appear during the aliens' evolutionary history? Drag the aliens and shared derived characters to their appropriate locations on this phylogenetic tree. Use only the blue labels for the blue targets and the white labels for the white targets.

A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics.

All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry.

In a rooted phylogenetic tree, each node with descendants represents the inferred most recent common ancestor of those descendants,[citation needed] and the edge lengths in some trees may be interpreted as time estimates.

Each node is called a taxonomic unit. Internal nodes are generally called hypothetical taxonomic units, as they cannot be directly observed.

Trees are useful in fields of biology such as bioinformatics, systematics, and phylogenetics. Unrooted trees illustrate only the relatedness of the leaf nodes and do not require the ancestral root to be known or inferred.

In this example, all aliens other than the outgroup have a spring tail, all but two of the groups have a fourth eye, two of the aliens have two tails, and one of the aliens has a grasping hand.

These characters can be used to create a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships between these organisms.

Learn more about phylogenetic tree here : https://brainly.com/question/2189834

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