Look at Fig5, top two panels. The black tips are winged stick insects; the white

Question

Look at Fig5, top two panels. The black tips are winged stick insects; the white tips are wingless insects.
A. "Winged-to-wingless transitions and wingless-to-winged transitions are equally likely." Even before looking at a phylogeny, why might you be suspicious of this assumption?
B. The two panels use different assumptions to recreate ancestral states, and the authors show that the right model is more supported than the left model. What does this imply about stick insect evolution?

is Figure 5. Ancestral state reconstructions of winged and wingless states for stick insects (A, B; data from Whiting et al. 2003) and of sexual and asexual reproduction for oribatid mites (C, D; data from Domes et al. 2007). The complex state (winged or sexual) is black, and the simpler state (wingless or asexual) is white. Two Mk2 models were used in each system: (A, C) two transition rates, stationary root, and (B, D) one transition rate fixed to zero, root fixed to complex state. Based on the results in Table 3; for the stick insects, there is substantially less support for (A) than for (B), whereas for the mites, there is approximately equal support for (C) and (D) 9

Explanation / Answer

a)

b)

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