Which of the five marks in the tree above corresponds to the

Which of the five marks in the tree above corresponds to the most recent common ancestor of a mushroom and a sponge? a b c d e

Solution

d shoud be the most recent common ancestor of mushroom and sponge in the given question.

Any phylogenetic tree is consists of tips, internal nodes and edges. The tips (leaves) of the phylogenetic tree represent current day species, groups of descendant taxa. The internal nodes represent the common ancestor of those descendants (speciation events); most internal nodes will split up into two branches. The edges connect nodes to nodes and nodes to tips; their lengths may correspond to time estimates - evolutionary time.