Systems and Cladistics Flashcards
What are systematics?
The study of biological diversity and its evolutionary history.
What is taxonomy?
The major, traditional part of systematics used for the description, identification, naming, and classification of organisms.
What is phylogeny?
The evolutionary history of a group of organisms.
What is a monophyletic group?
A group that contains an ancestral taxon and all its descendants.
What is a paraphyletic group?
A group that contains an ancestral taxon and some of its descendants.
What is a polyphyletic group?
A group that contains two or more ancestral taxons with descendants, but does not include a common ancestor.
Define taxon (pl. taxa).
A group of organisms treated together at a given rank.
Define clade.
Another term for a monophyletic group.
What is apomorphy?
An evolutionary derived character state.
Define autoapomorphy.
An apomorphy unique to a single taxon/lineage.
Define synapomorphy.
A shared apomorphy (that unites several lineages).
