Plastic Amniote Phylogeny

This is suitable for early undergraduates and advanced high school students investigating phylogeny, paleontology, evolutionary relationships, and life through time. I use this as a synthesis exercise before the final exam in my Freshman History of Life class

phylogeny/cladistics, the evolution of amniotes.

I use this as a synthesis exercise (e.g., before an exam or after a series of lectures/labs). This can be run as a stand-alone lab exercise, a group assignment, or a concept test after a lecture/reading.

To solidify students' understanding of the relationships between amniote taxa (both extant and extinct).

Analyze data, Synthesize data, Create a visual representation of a hypothesis.

This exercise reinforces "tree thinking", phylogenetic relationships, and the specific relationships in amniota.They also learn to draw a phylogenetic hypothesis.

This exercise has students analyze a group of organisms and create a phylogeny of their evolutionary relationships. The exercise works best with groups of 4-6 but could be done with fewer in a group. The group gets a mixed bag of plastic amniote toys (e.g., mammals, dinos, birds, and other reptiles) and they have to (a) draw a phylogeny that shows the relationships between all their plastic organisms and (b) name all the parts of the tree, specifically, clade names, terminal taxa, and synapomorphic or autapomorphic characters for clades). Using their lecture notes/readings/etc. ask the students to identify their plastic organisms (you can challenge them to ID the generic names, or just stop at family depending on the class). Then, have the students draw a phylogeny that shows the relationships between their creatures; have them name the terminal taxa and clades as well as adding the characters that distinguish the groups.

• Teacher Handout (Acrobat (PDF) 698kB May17 18)
• Fill in the Blank Phylogeny.pdf (Acrobat (PDF) 1013kB Jul20 20)

Note: This could be run with fewer organisms in each bag depending on how much detail your class goes into (e.g., they could differentiate 5 dinosaurs or only 1).

*Note: I have bought the following plastic creature packs for this exercise:

• 13 Birds www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GZED7K/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
• 12 Crocodiles www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00362RVD8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
• 12 Snakes www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CDLJEKA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
• 2 birds, 10 mammals www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014Q6PIZ0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1
• Assorted Dinos (usually 3-6 of each type listed above, 72 total) www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DN8I0M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This will depend on the level you want your students to understand phylogeny. I have them turn it in a "fill in the blanks" activity (Fill in the Blank Phylogeny.pdf (Acrobat (PDF) 1013kB Jul20 20)) and then I make corrections and cover common issues in class the next day.