Cladistics - Cladistic methods

Cladistics (Greek: klados = branch) is a branch of biology that determines the evolutionary relationships between living things based on derived similarity. It is the most prominent of several phylogenetic systematics, which study the evolutionary relationships of living things. Cladistics is a method of rigorous analysis, using "shared derived properties" (synapomorphies: see below) of the organisms being studied. Cladistic analysis forms the basis for most modern systems of biological classification, which seek to grou ...

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• Cladistics - Definitions
• Cladistics - Cladistic methods
• Cladistics - Cladistic classification

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Typically, a cladistic analysis begins by collecting information on certain features of all the organisms in question. Features may come in different versions (e.g. feather-color may be blue in one species but red in another). These features are collectively called characters, and specific versions are called character states. Thus, "red feathers" and "blue feathers" are two character states of the character "feather-color." After recording several character states, the researcher decides which ones were present befor ...

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Cladistics, Cladistics - Definitions, Cladistics - Cladistic methods, Cladistics - Cladistic classification

Read more here: » Cladistics: Encyclopedia II - Cladistics - Cladistic methods

A recent trend in biology since the 1960s, called cladism or cladistic taxonomy, requires taxa to be clades. In other words, cladists argue that the classification system should be reformed to eliminate all non-clades. In contrast, other taxonomists insist that groups reflect phylogenies and often make use of cladistic techniques, but allow both monophyletic and paraphyletic groups as taxa. A monophyletic group is a clade, comprising an ancestral form and all of its descendants, and so forming one (and only one) e ...

See also:

Cladistics, Cladistics - Definitions, Cladistics - Cladistic methods, Cladistics - Cladistic classification

Read more here: » Cladistics: Encyclopedia II - Cladistics - Cladistic classification