Land Plant Cladograms

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Cladograms can be used to predict characteristics of organisms by analyzing the distribution of different traits. Our land plant phylogeny has Charophytes as the outgroup, and the ingroups are Mosses, Ferns, Conifers, and Angiosperms. In cladograms there can be synapomorphies, autapomorphies, and pleisiomorphies. We are observing certain characteristics down the phylogeny and finding why they are crucial in increasing plants’ survival. Right after Charophytes, you see that plants became terrestrial. There were many advantages to this, including: light spectrum that was unfiltered by water, more free carbon dioxide available, and the soil they were in had many possible nutrients. There also weren’t as many pathogens on land than there were