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Using a classicist approach, we constructed a hypothetical phylogeny tree of many different plant tax by comparing their morphologies. We first decided to sort the various types of plants into groups based on morphological features. After sorting these plants into five different groups we began to determine how the plants differed from catheter in the group and what features set them apart.
From this we started to create the hypothetical tree and decided to put aquatic plants at the start of the tree, as it’s most commonly believed life originated in the ocean. We then put the other plants into various categories on the tree based upon the morphologies that set them apart from the others. A comparison of the hypothetical phylogeny and the calculate phylogeny: Many of the plants we put into groups using the classicist approach were similarly matched from the phonetic approach.
From our hypothetical tree we had one main branch and then subdivided the plants into five various groups. In the calculated tree it had two main branches and many subdivided categories for the various morphologies. Most of the groups we used to separate the plants room morphological features when creating the hypothetical tree could still be applied for grouping methods in the calculated tree (such as whether the plants were aquatic, could produce flowers, etc… . The only two plants that we mistakenly grouped together (from the classicist approach) was Polyploidy and Exquisite believing they both had spores and put them in the same group. However this was not the case and using the phonetic approach we could follow it back and see that Polyploidy is land based and that Exquisite is water based and that both were in their own groups. Classicist vs… Phonetic approach (advantages and disadvantages):
One of the main advantages of using the classicist approach is that it can easily be created just by the sorting of various morphological features and can give a quick sketch for recreating phylogeny’s. However from this approach it can be prone to any errors made and is not as accurate as the phonetic approach. The main advantage of the phonetic approach lies in it’s accuracy and can more accurately sort organisms into groups based on data for their phylogeny’s. The disadvantage from this is that it requires a lot of data and can not be as easily produced in the field like the classicist approach.