cladogram
- Noun:
- A diagrammatic tree: A cladogram is a branching diagram that illustrates the evolutionary relationships among a group of organisms or other entities based on shared derived characteristics.
- A tool in phylogenetics: It is a specific type of tree structure used in biological systematics to represent a hypothesis about the pattern of evolutionary descent.
- Noun:
- The biologist constructed a cladogram to show the relationships between different bird species.
- In the textbook, the cladogram clearly indicated that mammals and reptiles share a common ancestor.
"To root a cladogram": To designate a particular branch or node as the common ancestor of all groups in the diagram, providing a direction to the evolutionary timeline.
- The researchers rooted the cladogram using the oldest known fossil in the group.
"A resolved cladogram": A cladogram in which the branching patterns are fully determined, with no ambiguous or unresolved nodes (polytomies).
- The new genetic data allowed the team to produce a fully resolved cladogram.
Cladistics (n): The methodological approach and school of classification that uses cladograms to group organisms based on shared evolutionary history.
- Cladistics has revolutionized our understanding of evolutionary relationships.
Phylogenetic tree (n): A broader term for a diagram showing evolutionary relationships; a cladogram is a specific type of phylogenetic tree that typically does not depict ancestor-descendant relationships or amounts of evolutionary change.
- While all cladograms are phylogenetic trees, not all phylogenetic trees are cladograms.
- Phylogenetic diagram: A diagram representing evolutionary relationships.
- Dendrogram: A general term for any tree-shaped diagram representing hierarchical relationships, which can include cladograms.
"To infer a cladogram": To use data (morphological, genetic) to deduce and construct a cladogram.
- Scientists used DNA sequences to infer a new cladogram for the plant family.
"Branch length in a cladogram": In some cladograms, the length of a branch may represent the amount of evolutionary change or time, though many simple cladograms use branches of equal length.
- The cladogram with scaled branch lengths suggested a rapid diversification event.
- "To read the tree": A common idiom in systematics meaning to interpret the relationships shown in a cladogram or phylogenetic tree.
- Once you learn how to read the tree, the cladogram tells a clear story of descent.
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a tree diagram used to illustrate phylogenetic relationships
