Which of the following is true of all horizontally oriented phylogenetic trees, where time advances to the right?
A) Each branch point represents a point in absolute time.
B) Organisms represented at the base of such trees are descendants of those represented at higher levels.
C) The fewer branch points that occur between two taxa, the more divergent their DNA sequences should be.
D) The common ancestor represented by the rightmost branch point existed more recently in time than the common ancestors represented at branch points located to the left.
E) The more branch points there are, the fewer taxa are likely to be represented.
Schematic relationship between a phylogenetic tree and taxonomy.
Convergence among tropical alpine plants: (a) Senecio trees on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa
True-color view of Mars seen through NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1999
Trees in Poland
Elements of a phylogenetic tree
Phylogenetic footprinting