Question

Im in the process of making a cladogram what I need to know is what ancestrial and derived traits are shared among honeybees, grasshopper, blackwidow spiders, mosquitos, and yellow jackets

Answer 1

The best way to figure out what traits are ancestral is to look at an outside group. All of the organisms that you mentioned are insects except for one. Traits that spiders AND insects both have are likely to come from a common ancestor, e.g. jointed limbs.

Answer 2

If what you say is true then to an organism like the honeybee if it was on a cladogram then the black widow would be the farthest from it based on the phenotype of both organisms

Answer 3

Right. Insects are more closely related to each other than they are to spiders (which are not insects), but they share a common ancestor further back.

Answer 4

I would also guess that an organism like a mosquito would be the second furthest away from the honeybee in terms of a cladogram because of the difference in both organisms pubecents

Answer 5

So the conclusion I came up with for catagorization of these organisms from similarities to extreme differences would be african honeybee, yellow jacket, grasshopper, mosquito, and black widow spider.

Answer 6

I'd put bees and yellowjackets together, actually. Bees and wasps are pretty similar, right? They're both members of the order Hymenoptera because of certain characteristics of their wings.

Mosquitoes are also holometabolous insects (i.e. they have larvae and a pupal stage), but if you look at their wings, general body shape, and fancy mouthparts, they don't have as much in common with bees/wasps as bees/wasps do with each other.