View example sentences, synonyms and word forms for Cladistics.
Cladistics meaning
An approach to biological systematics in which organisms are grouped based upon synapomorphies (shared derived characteristics) only, and not upon symplesiomorphies (shared ancestral characteristics); a method of classifying organisms based on their evolutionary relationships instead of superficial characteristics.
Synonyms of Cladistics
Example sentences (9)
Ancestrally differentiated populations Cladistics is another method of classification.
At the same time, cladistics rapidly became the dominant set of methods of phylogenetics in evolutionary biology, because computers made it possible to process large quantities of data about organisms and their characteristics.
Criticism Cladistics, either generally or in specific applications, has been criticized from its beginnings.
Difference from cladistics Phenetic analyses do not distinguish between plesiomorphies - traits that are inherited from an ancestor (and therefore phylogenetically uninformative) - and apomorphies - traits that evolved anew in one or several lineages.
For the anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995), however, there are more profound methodological and conceptual problems with using cladistics to support concepts of race.
These pre- cladistics analyses emphasised as shared features: multiciliated (with multiple cilia per cell), glandular epidermis; rod-shaped secretory bodies or rhabdites; frontal glands or organs; protonephridia ; and acoelomate body organization.
The use of newer taxonomic tools such as cladistics and phylogenetic nomenclature has led to a different way of looking at evolution (expressed in many nested clades ) and this sometimes leads to a desire for more ranks.
Today, cladistics is the most popular method for constructing phylogenies not only from morphological data but also from molecular.
W. H. Freeman, San Francisco. xv + 573 p. Phenetics has largely been superseded by cladistics for research into evolutionary relationships among species.