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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]
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 ...
English: Phylogenetic groups: A monophyletic taxon contains a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Diagram: in yellow, the group of "reptiles and birds" A paraphyletic taxon contains its most recent common ancestor, but does not contain all the descendants of that ancestor. Diagram: in cyan, the reptiles
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 ...
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 diagram shows three common ways of doing this. For previously defined clades A, B, and C, the clade X can be defined as: The three most common ways to define the name of a clade: node-based, branch-based and apomorphy-based definition. The tree represents a phylogenetic hypothesis of the relations of A, B and C.
Evolutionary taxonomy, evolutionary systematics or Darwinian classification is a branch of biological classification that seeks to classify organisms using a combination of phylogenetic relationship (shared descent), progenitor-descendant relationship (serial descent), and degree of evolutionary change.