Question

Some species in a hypothetical family of beetles are winged, and others are wingless. Which of the following would be most useful in determining whether having wings or being wingless was the ancestral trait?

a) Maximum likelihood methods

b) An ingroup

c) An outgroup

d) Homologies

e) Homoplasies

Answer 1

An outgroup is most useful to determine if having wings or being wingless is the ancestral beetle trait, using maximum parsimony to assess the simplest evolutionary pathway.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine whether having wings or being wingless was the ancestral trait in a hypothetical family of beetles, an outgroup would be most useful. The outgroup refers to a species or a group of species closely related to, but not part of, the study group (the ingroup), and it helps distinguish shared ancestral traits from shared derived traits.

By assessing the traits of the outgroup, biologists can infer whether a characteristic is ancestral or derived within the ingroup. Maximum parsimony is used in this process, which selects for the phylogenetic tree that represents the simplest evolutionary pathway with the least character changes. This method relies on evaluation of both homologous traits, which are inherited from a common ancestor, and homoplasies, which are traits that have arisen independently and are not due to common ancestry.