Your professor wants you to construct a phylogenetic tree of orchids. She gives you tissue from seven orchid species and one lily. What is the most likely reason she gave you the lily? a. to see if the lily is a cryptic orchid species b. to serve as an outgroup c. to see if the lily and the orchids show all the same shared derived characters d. to demonstrate likely homoplasies

When studying the phylogeny of a group, there must be an outgroup that can serve to understand which characters are plesiomorphic (or ancestral) and how they changed to what new character. The outgroup must be outside the study group, in this case, orchids, which would be the Lily.

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adefioyelaoye adefioyelaoye · Answer 2 · 2022-03-03T11:54:38+01:00

The most likely reason the lily was given was to to serve as an outgroup.

What is an Outgroup?

This is defined as a more distantly related group of organisms which serves as a reference group. It is usually done when determining the evolutionary relationships of the ingroup which in this case is the orchid.

The above explanations thereby means that option B is the most appropriate choice.

Read more about Outgroups here https://brainly.com/question/7548841