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The term sister group is used in phylogenetic analysis, however, only groups identified in the analysis are labeled as "sister groups".. An example is birds, whose commonly cited living sister group is the crocodiles, but that is true only when discussing extant organisms; [3] [4] when other, extinct groups are considered, the relationship between birds and crocodiles appears distant.
Phylogenetic nomenclature is a method of nomenclature for taxa in biology that uses phylogenetic definitions for taxon names as explained below. This contrasts with the traditional method , by which taxon names are defined by a type , which can be a specimen or a taxon of lower rank , and a description in words. [ 1 ]
At the time when biologist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) published the books that are now accepted as the starting point of binomial nomenclature, Latin was used in Western Europe as the common language of science, and scientific names were in Latin or Greek: Linnaeus continued this practice.
In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each other, further blurring any distinctions.
Taxonomy is that part of Systematics concerned with topics (a) to (d) above. A whole set of terms including taxonomy, systematic biology, systematics, scientific classification, biological classification, and phylogenetics have at times had overlapping meanings – sometimes the same, sometimes slightly different, but always related and ...
Lazarus taxon; node-based taxon; ootaxon (oospecies, etc.): a taxon known from fossil eggs; parataxon; sciotaxon a taxon known from partial evidence but believed to be identical to an orthotaxon; sister taxon; zombie taxon; polyphyletic taxon; monophyletic taxon: a taxon consisting of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants; a clade ...
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.
The International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature, known as the PhyloCode for short, is a formal set of rules governing phylogenetic nomenclature.Its current version is specifically designed to regulate the naming of clades, leaving the governance of species names up to the rank-based nomenclature codes (ICN, ICNCP, ICNP, ICZN, ICVCN).