Fig. 11

Question development using published phylogeny of plants, assessment trees, and images. a Taxa selected from a plant phylogeny (modified from Fig. 1 in Finet et al. 2010) with clades color-coded. b Assessment categories for each taxonomic group. c Taxa selected for the assessment question: palm (focal; green), orange tree (MCR; green), cycad (similarity; yellow), pine (node counting; yellow), and magnolia (proximity; blue). d Color-coded rooted tree B.3 (Figs. 3, 4b). e Assessment tree, B.3.1 (Fig. 4b). The assessment tree is configured by branch addition and clade rotation about nodes so taxa acting as distracters in the question represent their respective incorrect strategy. Sample question: Who is most closely related to the Palm? a. Magnolia, b. Orange, c. Pine, d. Cycad