2021 Padron Teaching and Learning Symposium: Let’s Make a Dinosaur Tree Based on What You See: Cladograms

Let's Make a Dinosaur Tree Based on What You See: Cladograms
Jaeson Clayborn, Professor Math and Natural Science, Padron Campus 

Evolution, defined as a change in the genetic composition and heritable traits of a population over the course of many generations, is one of the five core concepts of biology. In class, we try to understand the evolutionary relationships among taxa. These relationships can be visually represented as phylogenetic trees and cladograms. Phylogenetic trees are hypotheses of evolutionary relationships, with the quality of a phylogeny being only as good as the quality of the data used to infer it. Cladograms are diagrams used to display hypothetical relationships between taxa based on morphological features. 

• The class activity: The morphology of organisms gives us clues about how closely related they are. In class, students work in groups and develop cladograms based on the morphological features of selected dinosaurs; afterwards, they share their cladograms to the class. Expected learning outcomes for this activity: 1) Ability to complete a character matrix to use in constructing a phylogeny; 2) Interpret a phylogeny and describe the potential evolutionary and morphological relationships depicted therein; 3) Recognize and address misconceptions in evolutionary thinking; 4) Compare and contrast different ways that you can infer the evolutionary history of an organism; and 5) Dinosaurs, dinosaurs are fun!

Presenter's Biography

Jaeson Clayborn is an assistant professor at Miami Dade College Padrón Campus. He teaches biology and environmental science courses. Through collaborations with experienced and unconventional professionals, he continues to improve his course materials using active and project-based learning techniques to improve the curricula. His professional life goals are to understand and preserve the entomological and botanical world, engage local communities through service-learning and inquiry-based activities, and empower people to be curious.

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This session will be recorded and made available to view after May 1, 2021