Lineage (evolution)

An evolutionary lineage is a sequence of species, that form a line of descent, each new species is the direct result of speciation from an immediate ancestral species. Lineages are subsets of the evolutionary tree of life. Lineages are often determined by the techniques of molecular systematics.

Phylogenetic representation of lineages

Lineages are typically visualized as subsets of a phylogenetic tree. For example, the tree in Figure 1 shows the separation of life into three ancient lineages: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. Thus a lineage is a single branch of the tree. Phylogenetic trees are typically created from DNA, RNA or protein sequence data. Apart from this, morphological differences and similarities have been, and still are used to create phylogenetic trees. Sequences from different individuals are collected and their similarity is quantified. Mathematical procedures are used to cluster individuals by similarity.

Just as a map is a scaled approximation of true geography, a phylogenetic tree is an approximation of the true complete evolutionary relationships. For example, in Figure 1, the entire lineage of animals has been collapsed to a single branch of the tree. However, this is merely a limitation of rendering space. In theory, a true and complete tree for all living organisms or for any DNA sequence could be generated.

Lineage II

Lineage II is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for Microsoft Windows, the second game in the Lineage series. It is a prequel to Lineage, and is set 150 years before the earlier game. It has become very popular since its October 1, 2003 launch in South Korea, reporting 1,000,918 unique users during the month of March 2007. To date, the game has been played by more than 14 million users, mostly based in Asia.

On November 30, 2011 Lineage II adopted a free-to-play model in Lineage II: Goddess of Destruction, with all game content being free save for "purchasable in-game store items and packs".

Plot

The game follows a fictional history through sets of plots called "Sagas". There are currently two sagas: "The Chaotic Chronicle" and "The Chaotic Throne". Large-scale updates/expansions known as "Chronicles" are done every six months, which introduce new story elements as well as new features and add-ons. Each chronicle also adds a great deal of new content to the game, including new skills, quests, areas and items; some chronicles also increased the level cap.

Lineage

Lineage may refer to:

Science

Gaming

Television

Evolution

Evolution is change in the heritable traits of biological populations over successive generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.

All life on Earth shares a common ancestor known as the last universal ancestor, which lived approximately 3.5–3.8 billion years ago, although a study in 2015 found "remains of biotic life" from 4.1 billion years ago in ancient rocks in Western Australia. According to one of the researchers, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth ... then it could be common in the universe."

Repeated formation of new species (speciation), change within species (anagenesis), and loss of species (extinction) throughout the evolutionary history of life on Earth are demonstrated by shared sets of morphological and biochemical traits, including shared DNA sequences. These shared traits are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct a biological "tree of life" based on evolutionary relationships (phylogenetics), using both existing species and fossils. The fossil record includes a progression from early biogenic graphite, to microbial mat fossils, to fossilized multicellular organisms. Existing patterns of biodiversity have been shaped both by speciation and by extinction. More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Estimates of Earth's current species range from 10 to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million have been documented.