Weekly Blog 10/22/17 - Animal Classification

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Cladogram_of_Cetacea_within_Artiodactyla.png/320px-Cladogram_of_Cetacea_within_Artiodactyla.png

Summary

To keep track of the evolutionary relationships between organisms, organisms are classified into groups inside groups inside of groups starting with their kingdom. Organisms can be classified into the 5 following kingdoms: Animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and protists. Once they have been classified into their kingdoms, they are grouped into their phylum and organized by their main features. In the animal kingdom, for example, there are 40 different phyla.  After that, organisms are organized into classes, orders, families, genus, and species. Whenever you hear the scientific or binomial name of a species, the first word would be their genus while the second word is their species. For example, the binomial name for humans is homo sapiens. Homo is the genus and sapiens the species. To organize all of this scientists use something called a cladogram (a branching off diagram like shown above). 

SP2 Developing and Using Models

I developed models when I completed worksheets by organizing my data into cladograms and data tables. When figuring out the t-rex's closest relative, I first created a table or model that listed out which organisms had or didn't have the traits. Once the data table was completed, I followed the online interactive and created a digital cladogram model. I used the model to find the closest relative to the t-rex. I did this by seeing which species shared the most traits with the t-rex as well as looking at the common ancestors. 

XCC: Patterns

In cladograms, all of the species are organized in a pattern. At the bottom of the cladogram, there are species that share only a few traits with the other species and are not as closely related. At the top of the cladogram, you will find the species that have all of the traits. Cladograms are organized in a pattern and order of common ancestry. They can also help us understand the patterns of evolution. We can look at cladograms to see the order of how species changed and to find patterns in evolution.