Taxonomy is the study and description of the variation of organisms, the investigation of the causes and consequences of this variation, and the manipulation of the data obtained to produce a system of classification. Through the use of an evolutionary tree I will be able to represent the relationships present in ten different organisms from the Monera, Protista, and Plant Kingdoms. I hope to accomplish a proof that a flowering plant evolved from an oscillatria. The evolutionary tree will consist of branches and nodes. A branch represents a single line of decent from a common ancestor and a node represents a time of genetic divergence and speciation. The tree will be composed of morphological, physiological, and behavioral traits. We will use a list of ten operational taxonomic units and present 15 attributes. The attributes must be different in order to see the differences between species. The tree should contain a species that will be the outgroup. The outgroup cannot hold any of the attributes that are going to be investigated. After the organisms and attributes are chosen and compared an evolutionary tree can be created. .
For the purpose of this lab the operational taxonomic units used were Oscillatoria, Chlamdomonas, Spirogyra, Pterophyta, Anthophyta, Bryophytes, Coniferophyta, Euglena, Charophyceae, and Paramecium (See the attached spreadsheet for organisms and attributes). The outgroup in this lab was the Oscillatoria because it did not hold any of the attributes used to compare the other organisms. The first and simplest organism observed was the paramecium because it was multicelled and could move with cilia. The first evolutionary step from the paramecium is the euglena because it is multicellular; it moves and produces its own food by the use of chloroplasts. Branching off the euglena is the chlamydoma. This organism possesses the same attributes as the euglena except for one major evolutionary characteristic.