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e. In biology, phylogenetics (/ ˌfaɪloʊdʒəˈnɛtɪks, - lə -/) [1][2][3] is the study of the evolutionary history of life using genetics, which known as phylogenetic inference. It establishes the relationship between organisms with the empirical data and observed heritable traits of DNA sequences, protein amino acid sequences, and morphology.
A phylogenetic tree, phylogeny or evolutionary tree is a graphical representation which shows the evolutionary history between a set of species or taxa during a specific time. [1][2] In other words, it is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon ...
The cladistic or phylogenetic species concept is that a species is the smallest lineage which is distinguished by a unique set of either genetic or morphological traits. No claim is made about reproductive isolation, making the concept useful also in palaeontology where only fossil evidence is available.
In biological phylogenetics, a clade (from Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos) 'branch'), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, [1] is a grouping of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. [2] In the taxonomical literature, sometimes ...
Cladistics (/ kləˈdɪstɪks / klə-DIST-iks; from Ancient Greek κλάδος kládos 'branch') [1] is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived characteristics ...
Category. v. t. e. In phylogenetics, the crown group or crown assemblage is a collection of species composed of the living representatives of the collection, the most recent common ancestor of the collection, and all descendants of the most recent common ancestor. It is thus a way of defining a clade, a group consisting of a species and all its ...
The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy. [26] [27] [20] By extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at the higher taxonomic ranks subgenus and above, [20] or simply in clades that include more than one taxon considered a species, expressed in terms of phylogenetic nomenclature. [28]
Maximum parsimony (phylogenetics) In phylogenetics and computational phylogenetics, maximum parsimony is an optimality criterion under which the phylogenetic tree that minimizes the total number of character-state changes (or minimizes the cost of differentially weighted character-state changes). Under the maximum-parsimony criterion, the ...