Clade
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A clade (from Ancient Greek Template:Lang, klados, "branch") or monophylum (see monophyletic) is a group consisting of an ancestor and all its descendants, a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The ancestor may be an individual, a population or even a species (extinct or extant). Many familiar groups, rodents and insects for example, are clades; others, like lizards and monkeys, are not (lizards excludes snakes, monkeys excludes apes and humans).
Increasingly, taxonomists try to name preferably or only taxa that are clades.
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See also
- Binomial nomenclature
- Biological classification
- Cladistics
- Crown group
- Paraphyly
- Phylogenetic nomenclature
- Phylogenetics
- Polyphyly
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