Several Distantly Related Clades of a Family of Plants Have

question 185

Multiple Choice

Several distantly related clades of a family of plants have smooth fleshy leaves, whereas most plants related to the plants with fleshy leaves do not have this trait.Without any further information, the least parsimonious explantation for this is that the fleshy leaves

• A) evolved due to convergent evolution.
• B) are a homologous feature within this family.
• C) are a homoplastic trait within this family.
• D) are examples of evolutionary reversals.
• E) are due to a change in a single gene.

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Definitions:

Median

The median is the middle value in a list of numbers sorted in ascending or descending order, splitting the dataset into two halves.

Standard Deviation

A statistic that measures the dispersion or variance in a set of values, indicating how spread out the numbers are from the average.

Range

The difference between the highest and lowest values in a set of data, indicating the dataset's dispersion.

Median

The middle value in a set of numbers, which separates the higher half from the lower half of the data set.