The Gummy Tree Challenge - Building Connections One Treat at a Time

Abstract

Evolutionary trees are slowly but surely making their way into high school classrooms, and teachers are increasingly gaining access to resources that may help in fostering a better understanding of how to interpret or read phylogenies. Nevertheless, instructional material on the basic principles behind building evolutionary trees is still sorely lacking. Here we provide a brief overview of the highly classroom compatible tree building method known as maximum parsimony as well as a novel lab.