100% correct 2025/2026
In your own words, describe how you would define a vertebrate. - correct answer ✔
Evolutionary relationships in a cladogram are based on the most parsimonious solution to a comparison
of:
a. Apomorphies
b. Homologies
c. Homoplasies
d. Synapomorphies
e. Sympleisiomorphies
f. I don't know the answer - correct answer ✔d. Synapomorphies
Which of the following is not a vertebrate?
a. A hagfish
b. A synapsid
,c. An osteichthyan
d. An arthropod
e. A crocodylian
f. I don't know the answer - correct answer ✔d. An arthropod
What do you think evolved first - the muscle system or the nervous system? Why? - correct answer ✔
Which germ layer(s) are found only in vertebrate embryos?
a. Endoderm
b. Ectoderm
c. Mesoderm
d. Neural Crest
e. Both 3 and 4
f. Both 2 and 3
g. Both 2 and 3
, h. Both 1 and 2
i. I don't know the answer - correct answer ✔d. Neural Crest
Ehlers-Danos Syndrome causes skin to stretch to great lengths, joints to be loose, and abnormalities in
blood vessel walls. A defect in which major tissue group could cause this?
a. Nervous
b. Muscle
c. Connective
d. Blood
e. Epithelial
f. I don't know the answer - correct answer ✔c. Connective
From what you know about embryology and developmental biology, do you think the Recapitulation
Hypothesis is supported? Why or why not? - correct answer ✔The theory of recapitulation says that
the development of an embryo of an animal goes through a series of stages representing successive
stages in the evolution of vertebrates This idea is not supported by empirical evidence however because
rather than a series of successive stages, animals develop from less specific to more specific during
embryology. Therefore, traits that are shared among all vertebrates are going to be appear in early
embryological stages as all vertebrates share a common ancestor and therefore share those
developmental traits. At no stage, does an embryo resemble an adult ancestor, though it may have