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The idea of a tree of life arose from ancient notions of a ladder-like progression from lower into higher forms of life (such as in the Great Chain of Being).Early representations of "branching" phylogenetic trees include a "paleontological chart" showing the geological relationships among plants and animals in the book Elementary Geology, by Edward Hitchcock (first edition: 1840).
The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor, conceptual model, and research tool used to explore the evolution of life and describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). [1]
The science that tries to reconstruct phylogenetic trees and thus discover clades is called phylogenetics or cladistics, the latter term coined by Ernst Mayr (1965), derived from "clade". The results of phylogenetic/cladistic analyses are tree-shaped diagrams called cladograms ; they, and all their branches, are phylogenetic hypotheses.
A simple cladogram showing the evolutionary relationships between four species: A, B, C, and D. Here, Species A is the outgroup, and Species B, C, and D form the ingroup. In cladistics or phylogenetics, an outgroup [1] is a more distantly related group of organisms that serves as a reference group when determining the evolutionary relationships of the ingroup, the set of organisms under study ...
Although "tree" is a common word, there is no universally recognised precise definition of what a tree is, either botanically or in common language. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In its broadest sense, a tree is any plant with the general form of an elongated stem, or trunk, which supports the photosynthetic leaves or branches at some distance above the ground ...
A water sprite (also called a water fairy or water faery) is a general term for an elemental spirit associated with water, according to alchemist Paracelsus. Water sprites are said to be able to breathe water or air and sometimes can fly. These creatures exist in the mythology of various groups.
Through this tree, organisms can be categorized by divergence from the common ancestor, and primitive characters, to clades of organisms with shared derived character states. Furthermore, cladograms allow researchers to view the changes and evolutionary alterations occurring in a species over time as they move from primitive characters to ...
Ceratopteris is a fairly popular aquarium plant, often sold under the name "water sprite." It may be grown as an emersed but natant (floating) plant, or as an immersed plant rooted in the substrate. Under the right conditions the plants will grow fully emerse erect leaves.