A cladogram is based on characteristics.

The relationships cladograms show is hypothetical,

meaning they haven't been proven genetically.

• You read cladograms and phylogenetic trees the same way, but phylogenetic trees
are often more complex than cladograms.
• While you can easily make a cladogram on your own, you couldn't make a
phylogenetic tree without access to DNA or other molecular data for the animals
you're studying.

The main line on a cladogram isn't drawn to any specific scale, but you can infer that nodes closer
to the start of the main line happened longer ago than nodes closer to the end. With a phylogenetic
tree, the main line shows the degree to which organisms change genetically.
• On a phylogenetic tree, animals that are closer together are also more genetically
similar. This isn't necessarily true on a cladogram that doesn't use any molecular
evidence.

It can be constructed based on the morphological or structural features that are developmentally
fixed or innate and not influenced by environmental pressures.
In making a cladogram, one should take note that the cladogram resembles a tree, which branches
off a main trunk. The first node leads to the branch of organisms with the least in common with
the other groups (Sharks). The next node of the trunk will lead to Ray-finned fish, then
Amphibians and will lead to another node that branches off to Primates and Rodents. The
final node of the trunk branches off to Crocodile and Birds as shown in the cladogram below:

The reason why Crocodile follows Birds is because they lay eggs. The cladogram hypothesizes the

transition from amniotic eggs to shelled eggs occurred during evolution. Thus, the points where
the lines converge (red marks on the cladogram above) means that the organisms from that point
upwards share a common ancestor and the organisms from that point downwards do not.
CLADE:
➢ One branch on the diagram showing a group os species that share a single common ancestor.
DERIVED CHARACTERISTICS:
➢ A trait that arose in the common ancestor of a particular lineage and was passed along to its
descendants.
HOMOLOGY:
➢ When two species have a similar characteristic because it was inherited by both from a common
ancestor.
HOMOPLASY:
➢ A similar feature shared by two or more taxa that does not meet the criterion (or criteria)
of homology. Homoplasies
generally arise via convergence.

CONVERGENCE:
➢ The independent (convergent) evolution of anatomical or functional similarity between
unrelated or distantly related lineages or forms. The resulting similarities are only
superficial, generally resulting from similar adaptation to similar environments and are
NOT a result of common ancestry (and are therefore NOT homologies).

The method of hypothesizing relationships between organisms and constructing cladograms

is called cladistics. The hypothetical relationships between organisms is called a phylogeny. The
study of the evolutionary history and relationships between organisms or groups is called
phylogenetics. Cladograms indicate common ancestry, but they do not indicate the amount of
evolutionary time between an ancestor and a descendant group. While the lines of a cladogram
may be different lengths, these lengths have no meaning. In contrast, the branch lengths of a
phylogram are proportional with respect to evolutionary time. So, a long branch indicates a longer
time than a shorter branch. While they may appear similar, cladograms also differ from
dendrograms. Cladograms represent hypothetical evolutionary differences between groups of
organisms, while dedrograms represent both taxonomic and evolutionary relationships.
Cladograms give us a framework for understanding how groups of organisms evolved, how
rapidly they evolved, and how their evolutionary history relates to the earth's changing climate and
geography.
INTERPRETING A CLADOGRAM

1. Locate the starting point of the cladogram.

Every cladogram has a main line that represents time. The line starts at one end before there
are any branches.
• The starting point is usually the bottom-left, but it might be a different spot
depending on the orientation of the cladogram you're looking at. Orientation
TAXA
doesn't matter with cladograms—they still convey the same information regardless
of how they're turned. A B C D E F

2. Move up the main line of the cladogram to move forward through time. monophyletic
That starting point you identified is the earliest point in time represented on the cladogram you're
group

looking at. The opposite end of the cladogram is the most recentTIME point in time. The position of a
node on the line indicates the relative point in time when that particular characteristic or trait
common ancestor
evolved. (of taxon D, E, & F)

common ancestor
(of taxon A & taxa B-F)
3. Use the position of the nodes to determine which characteristics evolved first.
The node closest to the start represents the characteristic that evolvedCladogram or Phylogenetic
first relative Tree
to the other
characteristics represented by the cladogram. The next one up from that was the next characteristic
to evolve, and so on until the last node, which represents the most recent evolutionary
development.
• For example, if the node closest to the starting point of the main line represents
"teeth" and the node halfway up the main line from the starting point represents
"lungs," you can infer from the cladogram that animals evolved teeth before they
evolved lungs.
4. Determine differences in animals based on where they branch off from the main line.
An animal branches off the main line at the point that its evolution diverges from the other animals
depicted on the cladogram. It doesn't have any of the characteristics beyond the node where it
branched off.

5. Relate the animals to each other based on the characteristics they share.
Larger groups of animals have a common ancestor further back in time. If you start at the first node
of a cladogram, all of the animals that branch off after that node have the characteristic indicated
by the first node in common.

MAKING OF CLADOGRAM

1. To build a cladogram, you first start with the species you are interested in studying.
2. Observe which characteristics are more or less commonly held.

MONOPHYLY, PARAPHYLY, POLYPHYLY

Monophyletic Group
• a group consisting of:
– a common ancestor +
 – all descendents of that common ancestor

Paraphyletic Group
• Consist of common ancestor but not all descendants
• Paraphyletic groups are unnatural, distort evolutionary history, and should not be
recognized.

"Reptilia"
Lizards &
Turtles Snakes Crocodyles Birds

Polyphyletic Group
• An assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary
origin.

Phylogenetic Tree Construction Method.

Character based method
This method is also called as discrete method and are based directly on the sequence characters
rather than pairwise distance.
The two most popular character-based method are:
1. Maximum Parsimony
2. Maximum Likelihood
What does Parsimony mean?
✓ Parsimony – principle in science where the simplest answer is the preferred
✓ In phylogeny: The preferred phylogenetic tree is the one that requires the fewest evolutionary
steps.
Parsimony Method
✓ Parsimony – is a fundamental principle to phylogenetic inference in which the phylogeny
of a group of species is inferred to be the branching pattern requiring the smallest number
of evolutionary changes.
✓ ACTG

DEFINITION
✓ This method predicts the evolutionary tree(s) that minimizes the number of steps required
to generate the observed variation in the sequences (minimum number of changes).
✓ This method is also sometimes referred to the minimum evolution method
Things to know about Parsimony Method
✓ Parsimony analysis is the primary way to estimate phylogenetic trees from aligned
sequences
✓ The maximum parsimony method is good for similar sequences, a sequences group with
small amount of variation
✓ This method does not give branch length, only the branch order
✓ Parsimony may be used to estimate “species” or “gene” phylogenies.

Steps
1. Identify all informative sites in the multiple alignment
2. For each possible tree, calculate the number of changes at each informative sire.
3. Sum the number of changes for each possible tree.
4. Tree with the smallest number of changes is selected as the most likely tree.

Phylogenetic Inference Using Parsimony Proceeds in two stages

1. Infer the unrooted tree for a set of species. An unrooted tree shows the branching relations
between the species but does not show the position of the deepest common ancestor. It is a
phylogenetic tree with time dimension removed.
2. Locate the root. This means finding the position of the deepest ancestor, or ‘root’ within
the tree.