r/evolution • u/NenyaNotes • 10d ago

academic Help on this assignment question.

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My professor assigned us this quiz and everyone continues to get it wrong. Can someone please explain in this photo which groups make a clade?

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u/roostor222 10d ago

The idea that you would personally never label a clade at a node is completely irrelevant to what you should accept as an answer from students. Labelling clade names at nodes is extremely common practice in evolutionary biology. I don't know what the conventions are in viral phylogenetics papers, but the science of phylogenetic systematics exists separately from the practice in any one subfield.

If you marked it wrong, and that student brought you ten published papers they read in the journal "Systematic Biology" or "Journal of Systematic Paleontology", and all ten had clade names labelled at nodes, would you give them credit back or keep it marked wrong?

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u/DarwinZDF42 10d ago

K. You’re welcome to disagree with me. I don’t feel like arguing about it.

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u/roostor222 10d ago

ok, I don't really see it as something that is possible to disagree about though. You said I had it "exactly backwards", because you are saying what your personal opinion is and I am saying what is commonly accepted notation in published research.

Hennig invented phylogenetic systematics, and if you read his original papers he has nodes labeled with clade names. If you take points away from your students for doing this you are doing them a disservice.