Traits and trees

We use traits both to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and to generate hypotheses about the timing of events in evolutionary history. (A) One set of traits—here genetic sequence data—is used to infer a phylogenetic tree for the species of interest. (B) A second set of traits, here flower color and morphology, are mapped onto the tree, helping us to reconstruct evolutionary events. The origin of the dark flower coloration is indicated by the filled horizontal bar. The origin of the novel flower shape is indicated by the open horizontal bar.