Liam M.

Biology
Per 3
9/18/14

The purpose of this activity, was to gain first hand experience with phylogenetic trees,
and further understand them, their purpose, and how to use them, and to do that, we would
create our own. The species we used in our own phylogenetic trees, though their existence was,
and is fictional, were called Cominicules, and using our own background knowledge on
taxonomy and how phylogenetic trees work, we were tasked with creating these trees. In this
paper Ill go over our process of dividing the different species, the correct tree, and patterns
that were found in the tree, such as divergent evolution.
The process of dividing the Comanicules, began with a designated common ancestor
that began nineteen million years ago, from there further, a section was made for every one
million years, and a random amount of Comanicules were in each said section. The second
generation, though only two different variations were present, already showed change in the
species. Something that proved difficult in our process, was the presence of living fossils.
These living fossils were variations of the species that, while evolving slightly from the original,
stopped evolving and did not go extinct, an example being the specific species 14, it only went
through four stages of evolution before stopping, and continuing to live until the present (Living)
Comanicules.
In comparison to the correct phylogenetic tree, our own was rather accurate, however,
upon closer inspection one might find a few mistakes in our ability to classify the living fossils,
and where species went extinct. In truth, none of the species died off entirely before passing on
a legacy of sorts, in fact, there were numerous areas in which we believed a species completely
died off, which caused confusion later in our process when many Comanicules showed up
looking nearly identical to those that we had thought already went extinct. All in all, I personally
challenge the organization and comprehensibility of the actual Phylogenetic trees design.
A few notable moments of evolutionary behavior in our phylogenetic tree, would look
something like convergent evolution, or even divergent evolution. One of the most noticeable

examples of convergent evolution, would be how 81, and 19 seemingly grow wing like
appendages for what I can only assume could be a very similar environment. And despite not
knowing the actual habitats or environmental conditions of these fictional species, one might be
able to make observations as to where they live, purely from features on the Comanicles.
Throughout this activity, I was personally able to gain insight on how to navigate, create
and understand Phylogenetic trees. However, a few questions remain from this activity, such as
why a tree like graph would be created, opposed to something a bit more organized and
comprehensible, or perhaps why we chose to use a fictional species opposed to observing
actual phylogenetic trees for an animal we are either familiar or unfamiliar with. Though I dont
expect to get these questions answered, they are still present.