What is an example of apomorphy?
What is an example of apomorphy?
For example, a plant species that descended from a white-flower-bearing ancestor eventually became a red-flower-bearing species. The red-flower trait is an apomorphy, i.e., a trait that innovated from the ancestors and made that species “unique” from that found in its ancestor.
What are Plesiomorphic and Apomorphic characters?
Apomorphy and plesiomorphy are two terms used to describe similar characters or traits within a clade. An apomorphic character is similar to all members of the clade while the plesiomorphic character is not similar in all members of the clade.
What is a Synapomorphic pattern?
Synapomorphies are fundamental to phylogenetic systematics as they offer empirical evidence of monophyletic groups. We define a fully synapomorphic character state as one shared by all of a clade’s terminal taxa and at the same time completely absent from all terminal taxa outside that clade.
Can a synapomorphy be an Plesiomorphy?
Synapomorphy vs Plesiomorphy In contrast to a synapomorphy, a plesiomorphy is a shared character, shared by two groups who inherited it from different ancestors. Because the character (grayness) is not present in the darker organisms (black circles), the trait cannot be considered a synapomorphy.
Why is Homoplasy a problem?
Homoplasy, especially the type that occurs in more closely related phylogenetic groups, can make phylogenetic analysis more challenging. In the case of DNA sequences, homoplasy is very common due to the redundancy of the genetic code.
Can a apomorphy be found in more than one taxon?
That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to the focal taxon (which may be a species, family or in general any clade). It can therefore be considered an apomorphy in relation to a single taxon.
What is the meaning of the word apomorphy?
: a specialized trait or character that is unique to a group or species : a character state (such as the presence of feathers) not present in an ancestral form In this case, white flowers are a derived condition, an apomorphy, and red flowers are the ancestral condition. — James D. Mauseth, Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology, 2009 Love words?
Where are apomorph characters believed to be found?
— C. Barry Cox and Peter D. Moore, Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach, 2010 … such apomorph characters are believed to be found only among the descendants of the ancestor in which the character first occurred. — Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, 1982
Which is the opposite of plesiomorph and apomorph?
apomorph (adj. apomorphic) An evolutionarily advanced (‘derived’) character state (the opposite of plesiomorph) that is possessed by a group of biological organisms and distinguishes those organisms from others descended from the same ancestor. The long neck of the giraffe is apomorphic; the short neck of its ancestor is plesiomorphic.