5.4 Cladistics
Essential idea:The ancestry of groups of species can be deduced by comparing their base or amino acid sequences.
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5.4 U1 A clade is a group of organisms that have evolved from a common ancestor.
5.4 U1 A clade is a group of organisms that have evolved from a common ancestor.
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Define clade and cladistics.
Over time species evolve and split to form new species. This process can occur repeatedly with some highly successful species leading to a large group of organisms that share a common ancestor. These groups of species evolved from a common ancestor, that have shared characteristics is called a clade is a method of classifying organisms into groups of species called clades (from Greek ‘klados' = branch)
Each clade consists of an ancestral organism and all of its evolutionary descendants
Members of a clade will possess common characteristics as a result of their shared evolutionary lineage
Branch points in the tree represent the time at which the two taxa spilt from each other
The degree of divergence between branches represent the differences that have developed between the two taxa since they diverged
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