Experimental Question and Phylogenetic Trees Analysis

Hypothesis 
We originally thought that Basil and Snapdragon would be more closely related because they are both annual plants. Furthermore we believed that the structure of the two plants would prove relationship between them. For instance, Basil and Snapdragon plants both have flowers that bloom off of a vine and each stem produces multiple flowers unlike that of the Tiger Lily. In this investigation we were trying to find out the homology of these three species but it is possible that anology is responsible for these species looking alike. Similar environmental pressures could've caused snapdragon and basil to have similar distribution of their flowers.

Uniprot
Q05554   RBL_ANTHMA is Snapdragon
Q05f795   RBL_BARLO is Tiger Lily
P2QBF7   P2QRP7_OCIBA is Basil
We are not confident in our uniprot results, because we could not find exact species matches to compare. They are variants of the same plants that we used. Uniprot suggests that Tiger Lily and Basil are most closely related, but this disagrees with both of our other two phylogenetic trees. One is perennial and one is annual, this means that according to this data, there is little data sequencing that corresponds to when the plant flowers.

Pollen 
We are most confident in our pollen tree. It is based of our SEM images and the shape and surface texture of each plant’s pollen. Basil has round pollen while the Tiger Lily has football shaped and Snapdragon is nearly rectangular. The texture is more similar between the pollens of the two flowers in addition to the fact that the pollens do not have the distinct circular shape. Furthermore, we believe that an important characteristic that could possibly prove relation between Tiger Lily and Snapdragon is the fact that their pollen grains contain apertures (in this case they are fissures). These openings in the pollen grains could relate to the plant’s cycle of reproduction and therefore distinguish the plants from each other. If so, then it would make sense that the Tiger Lily and Snapdragon plants are more closely related because they would have a more recent common ancestor that had pollen with apertures.