For this exercise you will visit the Eukaryotes page the Tree of Life website. The Tree of Life initiative is a global effort to understand the phylogenetic relationships of all organisms on the planet. Contributions to this effort come from hundreds of  labs worldwide, each working on a specific group of organisms, and the results are summarized at the Tree of Life website. As new information is produced and a consensus emerges about these relationships, the tree is augmented and refined to reflect this new information. Much of the newest informaton about groups is emerging from the study of molecular data. Visit the site, read the information there and be prepared to answer the following questions concerning the phylogeny, biology and evolution of the major groups of eukaryotes.

1.(2) What are eukaryotes? How are they different structurally from other organisms? How are they different nutritionally?
 
 

2.(2) What are the defining structural features of all eukaryotes that suggest to us what their original common ancestor was like?
 
 
 

3.(2) What eukaryote organelles are assumed to have arisen by endosymbiosis? From what endosymbiotic association did each organelle arise? What is the evidence for this?
 
 
 

4.(2) Current classifications, based on both ultrastructural and molecular data, recognize various large supergroups of eukaryotes. Each supergroup is remarkably diverse morphologically and ecologically, but each is apparently monophyletic. What does this mean? In what supergroups are the three most familiar kingdoms of multicellular organisms, the fungi, animals and plants? Are there supergroups that are primarily unicellular?
 
 
 
 

5.(2) What are opisthokonts? What major groups of organisms are included in this phylogenetic group and how are they related to one another?