click below
click below
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Biology 17-2
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Systematics | the classification of living organisms in terms of their natural relationships; it includes describing, naming, and classifying the organisms |
| Phylogenetics | the analysis of evolutionary, or ancestral, relationships between taxa |
| Phylogenetic diagram | a branching diagram that models the relationships by ancestry between different species or other taxonomic groups based on various evolutionary evidence |
| Cladistics | a phylogenetic classification system that uses shared derived characters and ancestry as the sole criterion for grouping taxa |
| Shared character | a feature that is common in all members of a particular group of organisms |
| Derived character | a feature that evolved only within a particular taxonomic group |
| Clade | a taxonomic grouping that includes only a single ancestor and all of its descendants |
| Cladogram | a diagram that is based on patterns of shared, derived traits and that shows the presumed evolutionary relationships between groups of organisms |