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Cladistics: Willi Hennig
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Cladistics (Greek: klados = branch) is a branch of biology that determines the evolutionary relationships between organisms based on derived similarities. It is the most prominent of several forms of phylogenetic systematics, which study the evolutionary relationships between organisms. Cladistics is a method of rigorous analysis, using "shared derived properties" (synapomorphies: see below) of the organisms being studied. Cladistic analysis forms the basis for most modern systems of biological classification, which seek to group organisms by evolutionary relationships. In contrast, phenetics groups organisms based on their overall similarity, while approaches that are more traditional tend to rely on key characters. Willi Hennig (1913 - 1976) is widely regarded as the founder of cladistics.
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Cladistics is the hierarchical classification of species based on evolutionary ancestry. Cladistics is distinguished from other taxonomic classification systems because it focuses on evolution (rather than focusing on similarities between species), and because it places heavy emphasis on objective, quantitative analysis. Cladistics generates diagrams called [C]ladograms that represent the evolutionary tree of life. DNA and RNA sequencing data are used in many important cladistic efforts. Computer programs are widely used in cladistics, due to the highly complex nature of cladogram-generation procedures. A major contributor to cladistics was the German entomologist Willi Hennig, who referred to it as phylogenetic systematics.[1] The term phylogenetics is often used synonymously with cladistics.
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Cladistics originated in the work of Willi Hennig, and since that time, there has been a spirited debate about the relative merits of cladistics versus Linnaean classification. Some of the debates that the cladists engaged in had been running since the 19th century, but they entered these debates with a new fervor, as can be learned from the
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Cladistics has taken a while to settle in, and there is still wide debate over how to apply Hennig's ideas in the real world. There is concern that use of widely different data sets (for instance, structural versus genetic characteristics) may produce widely different trees. However, largely, cladistictics has proven useful in resolving phylogenies and has gained widespread support.
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Cladistics is a method of classifying organisms by common ancestry, based on the branching of the evolutionary family tree. Organisms that share common ancestors (and therefore have similar features) are grouped into taxonomic groups called clades. Cladistics can ... be used to predict properties of yet-to-be discovered organisms. Phylogenetic systematics is a method of classification based on the evolutionary history of organisms, dividing organisms into meaningful groups and subgroups. It was developed by Willi Hennig, an entomologist, in 1950, but was not well accepted until decades later.
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Cladistics is a philosophy of classification that arranges organisms only by their order of branching in an evolutionary tree and not by their morphological similarity, in the words of Luria et al (1981). A major contributor to this school of thought was the German entomologist Willi Hennig, who referred to it as phylogenetic systematics (Hennig, 1979). The word [C]ladistics is derived from the ancient Greek
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Willi Hennig