Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The term monophyly, or monophyletic, derives from the two Ancient Greek words μόνος (mónos), meaning "alone, only, unique", and φῦλον (phûlon), meaning "genus, species", [4] [5] and refers to the fact that a monophyletic group includes organisms (e.g., genera, species) consisting of all the descendants of a unique common ancestor.
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]
Monophyletic phylogenetic tree of organisms". [23] Phylogenetic nomenclature is a semantic extension of the general acceptance of the idea of branching during the course of evolution, represented in the diagrams of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and later writers like Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel.
A rooted tree of life into three ancient monophyletic lineages: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes based on rRNA genes Lineages are typically visualized as subsets of a phylogenetic tree . A lineage is a single line of descent or linear chain within the tree, while a clade is a (usually branched) monophyletic group, containing a single ancestor ...
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).
A species complex typically forms a monophyletic group that has diversified rather recently, as is shown by the short branches between the species A–E (blue box) in this phylogenetic tree. Species forming a complex have typically diverged very recently from each other, which sometimes allows the retracing of the process of speciation.
These relationships are determined by phylogenetic inference methods that focus on observed heritable traits, such as DNA sequences, protein amino acid sequences, or morphology. The result of such an analysis is a phylogenetic tree—a diagram containing a hypothesis of relationships that reflects the evolutionary history of a group of ...
Recent studies, as per the APG, show that the monocots form a monophyletic group (a clade), but that the dicots are paraphyletic; nevertheless, the majority of dicot species fall into a clade with the eudicots (or tricolpates), with most of the remaining going into another major clade with the magnoliids (containing about 9,000 species).