#phylogenetics

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Below the poll is a series of animal images labeled A through J. A is the least close to the birds we have today; J is the closest. If you encountered these animals in the wild, which would you call birds? If you pick a higher up option, then that means you consider all the below ones birds as well - so if you pick A, then BCDEFGHIJ are all birds. If you pick J, only J is a bird.

A:

B:

C:

D:

E:

F:

G:

H:

I:

J:

PLEASE REBLOG THIS SO IT CAN LEAVE PALAEOBLR. I NEED PEOPLE WHO DON'T RECOGNIZE THESE ANIMALS ON SIGHT TO VOTE.

I apologize to all of y'all with vision impairments for whom this poll is inaccessible. Alas, this is an experiment, and I cannot name the taxa. Thank you.

All alt text includes artist attribution; I did not make these pictures myself.

[todays-xkcd]

There's a maximum likelihood that I'm doing phylogenetics wrong.

Geometriphylogenetics [Explained]

Transcript

[A tree diagram, or a dendrogram is shown, consisting of lines that branch off from left to right, starting with one horizontal line on the left. Eight results are shown on the right: ellipse on Path 1, circle on Path 2, triangle on Path 3, parallelogram on Path 4, trapezoid on Path 5, square on Path 6, rectangle on Path 7, and a pentagon on Path 8. The paths are listed in order top to bottom.] [Path 3 and the triangle are bold black, while the other branches are dimmer. The paths are connected as follows: Path 2 and 3 are connected, then both connect together to Path 1; Path 4 and 5 are connected, as are Path 6 and 7, and these two paths are connected altogether; Path 8 is then connected to the branch containing Paths 4 to 7. All of Paths 1 to 3 are then connected to Paths 4 to 8, the branches all culminating in a single line on the left.] [Caption below the panel:] The phylogenetic revolution continues: Triangles were long believed to be related to squares, but genetic analysis proves that they are actually very pointy circles.

[iamthekaijuking]

What animal groups do you classify brute wyverns as?

There’s too many options with descriptions too long to fit on a 12 answer poll so you’ll have to comment your answer on this one, sorry.

Also this is the last poll!

[blatentmisinformation]

Worms evolved relatively recently, in fact 90% of annelid species came into existence in the last 25 million years. The closest living relatives to worms are in fact lampreys.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Phylogenetics Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Phylogenetics—Field of biology that deals with the relationships between organisms. It includes the discovery of these relationships, and the study of the causes behind this pattern.

Additive tree - A phylogenetic tree in which the distance between any two points is the sum of the lengths of the branches along the path connecting two points.

Anagensis - Evolutionary change along an unbranching lineage; change without speciation.

Coalescence - The evolutionary process viewed backward through time, so that allelic diversity is traced back through mutations to ancestral alleles. Coalescent theory can be used to make predictions about effective population sizes, ages and frequencies of alleles, selection, rates of mutation, or time to common ancestry of a set of alleles.

Ontogeny - The growth of an organism through all its developmental stages (embryonic stage through death).

Plesiomorphy - An ancestral character state.

Punctuated equilibrium - A model of evolution in which change occurs in relatively rapid bursts, followed by longer periods of stasis.

Stasis - A period of little or no discernible change in a lineage.

Symplesiomorphy - A shared ancestral character state.

Unrooted tree - A phylogenetic tree that is not directed with respect to time.

Vicariance - Speciation which occurs as a result of the separation and subsequent isolation of portions of an original population.

Sources: 1 2 3 ⚜ More: Word Lists

[therizinosaurus--cheloniformis]

The Best way to start a Conversation has to be 'Phylogenetically speaking...'

[corin-tuckers-left-one]

About the "shrimp is bugs" meme. Taxonomically we try to classify things based on evolutionary ancestry, creating groups called 'clades'. A clade is made up of the last common ancestor for the group and all of the descendants of that ancestor. This system is 'hierarchical', so multiple smaller clades can fit within one larger one. E.g. humans are part of the clade hominoidea, which also includes other apes like chimpanzees and gorillas.

Shrimp and bugs are both arthropods (a clade), but although 'bugs' are a clade (called 'hemiptera') within insects (also a clade within arthropods), 'shrimp' is basically a catch-all term for 'small long-bodied crustacean' (so shrimp don't form a clade).

What's interesting is, until recently crustaceans (including shrimp and a bunch of other things) were thought to form their own clade. But DNA studies have shown that some crustaceans are more closely related to insects (again, including bugs) than they are to other crustaceans. So for our taxonomy to be consistent we'd have to consider all insects as crustaceans.

So shrimp isn't bugs, but in a roundabout way bugs is shrimp.

[haroldjaffe]

Fun fact! Although Knuckles the Echidna is closer to Sonic the Hedgehog socially, genetically he has more in common with Perry the Platypus.

[notlikeothergirlz]

i had to share this convo i had with a friend from undergrad

absolutely incomprehensible drivel. i love biology.

(CONTEXT: we were both entomology majors together and i'm currently creating slides for a guest lecture on arthropod systematics. arachnids are a notoriously controversial group because scientists can't agree on whether horseshoe crabs get to be in the club or not. i was reading an absolute taxonomic smackdown of a paper and had to share)

TL;DR nerd shit

[cbirt]

uDance, a novel method that builds highly accurate and scalable phylogenetic trees using the divide and conquer approach, has been devised jointly by scientists from the University of California, San Diego, and Arizona State University. Phylogenetic trees are like family trees for all living organisms that help us comprehend how different species are related to each other through evolution. The previous methods presented the drawbacks related to inaccuracy and inefficiency in handling large numbers of organisms. uDance, however, refines different parts of a phylogenetic tree independently and can also build off existing trees. Scientists implemented uDance and successfully generated a tree for around 2,00,00 genomes using 387 marker genes and a huge amount of amino acid data with enhanced accuracy and scalability.

The vast array of species on our planet translates into a large quantity of genetic material to investigate. There exist two methods, one emphasizing numerous genes and fewer organisms, and another focusing on a smaller number of organisms and more genes. The objective is to accumulate a plentiful supply of genes as well as numerous living organisms.

To achieve this goal, scientist Siavash Mirabab and his team have come up with uDance. The divide and conquer strategy employed by uDance breaks down the task into smaller parts and then merges them to build the family tree. This approach not only allows for efficient analysis of a massive amount of genetic data but also enables the updating of the tree as more and more data becomes available.

uDance was successful in creating a family tree for over 1,99,000 organisms using 387 marker genes while being computationally efficient which is a substantial improvement compared to previous methods.

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[krystal-prisms]

Put your reasoning in the notes, I want to hear exactly what hill you're gonna die on

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Idk who "mrbeast" is in the slightest all I know is every time someone brings him up I briefly go "wait why are people talking about a bayesian inference phylogenetics program on tumblr" before I remember that it's mrBAYES, and that's not what people are talking about

[wikipediagrams]

[iamthekaijuking]

What mammal groups do you classify fanged beasts as?

There’s too many options with descriptions too long to fit on a 12 answer poll so you’ll have to comment your answer on this one, sorry.

[linguisticalities]

[foozel-and-their-phantasms]

More like coelacanth my truest cousin (:

get it cause they're lobe finned fish just like us (:

ge t it they're closer related to humans than they are to trout or sharks (:

coelacanth my truest friend <3