cladistics

American  

[kluh-dis-tiks] / kləˈdɪs tɪks /

noun

Biology.

1. classification of organisms based on the branchings of descendant lineages from a common ancestor.

---

cladistics British  

/ kləˈdɪstɪks, ˈklædɪst, ˈklædɪzəm /

noun

1. (functioning as singular) biology a method of grouping animals that makes use of lines of descent rather than structural similarities

---

cladistics Scientific  

/ klə-dĭs′tĭks /

1. A system of classification based on the presumed phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary history of groups of organisms, rather than purely on shared features. Many taxonomists prefer cladistics to the traditional hierarchies of Linnean classification systems.

2. Compare Linnean

---

cladistics Cultural  

1. A method of taxonomic classification that groups organisms according to their lines of evolutionary descent. All descendants of a given organism are called a clade.

---

Other Word Forms

• cladism noun
• cladist noun
• cladistic adjective
• cladistically adverb

Etymology

Origin of cladistics

1965–70; cladist(ic) ( clad-, -istic ) + -ics

Example Sentences

He joined the American Museum of Natural History later that year, and made important contributions to the field of cladistics, which categorizes species along the lines of shared characteristics to build evolutionary trees.

From New York Times • Apr. 17, 2020

Both views draw support from cladistics studies, and the so-called woody magnoliid hypothesis—which proposes that the early ancestors of angiosperms were shrubs—also offers molecular biological evidence.

From Textbooks • Jan. 1, 2015

But palaeontologists tore up that evolutionary tree when they started using a more rigorous form of analysis called cladistics in the 1990s.

From Nature • Oct. 23, 2013

Presently, the most accepted method for constructing phylogenetic trees is a method called cladistics.

From Textbooks • Apr. 25, 2013

Luo says that Xu is one of only a few palaeontologists in China to embrace cladistics — a process for determining evolutionary relationships by analysing the features that groups share.

From Nature • Sep. 5, 2012