Taxonomy Phylogeny

Taxonomies group organisms according to phenotype, while phylogenetic systems groups organisms according to shared evolutionary heritage.

History of taxonomic concepts

History of taxonomic concepts:
Linnaeus, 1735 – 2 Kingdoms – Animalia, Vegetabilia
Haeckel, 1866 – 3 Kingdoms – Protista, Plantae, Animalia. Image Haeckel's tree of life.
Chatton, 1937 – 2 Empires – Prokaryota, Eukaryota
Copeland, 1956 – 4 Kingdoms – Monera (prokaryotes), Protoctista, Plantae, Animalia
Whittaker, 1969 – Monera (prokaryotes), Fungi, Protista, Plantae, Animalia
Woese et al, 1977 – 6 Kingdom – Eubacteria, Archaea, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia
Woese and Fox, 1999 – 3 Domain system: Eubacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes.

Table  Comparisons of Eubacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes - The Three Domains View Quicktime Movie - Genetic Data movie of phylogram construction - image cladogram - image Tree of Life— Lateral Gene Transfer Diagram - image uprooted tree - image 16S ribosomal RNA - image The "Shrub of Life" - image A comparison of key characteristics from the three domains of life - enlarged - image Whale phylogeny - Genomics Animations and Images - Proteins & Proteomics - Animations and Images – Evolution and Phylogenetics - Animations and Images - Human Evolution - Animations and Images - Genetics of Development - Animations and Images – Cell Biology & Cancer - Animations and Images - Neurobiology - Animations and Images - Biology of Sex & Gender - Animations and Images - Genetically modified organisms - Animations and Images - Biodiversity - Animations and Images – Microbial Diversity – Animations and Images – Emerging Infectious Diseases - Animations and Images – HIV & AIDS - Animations and Images :

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Anonymous Anonymous said...

Allopatric speciation occurs when a geographical barrier sub-divides a parent species, resulting in geographic and reproductive isolation such that the descendent species can no longer interbreed upon removal of the barrier.


Anagenesis differs from cladogenesis in that one species progressively transforms into a replacement species when sufficient gene mutations fix in the descendant population. At this point, the ancestral species has become extinct. This mechanism is distinct from the increase in numbers of species generated by cladogenetic branching events.

Cladogenesis is the mechanism of speciation in which one or more lineages (clades) arise from an ancestral line. Such speciation events increase the variety of plants or animals through branching of the phylogenetic tree. Cladogenesis is differentiated from anagenesis, which is the in toto replacement of one species by an anatomically distinct species.

Monophyletic taxon or clade: an accurate grouping of only (opp. polyphyletic) and all (opp. paraphyletic) descendents of a shared common ancestor. A monopyletic group is genetically homogeneous and reflects evolutionary relationships.

Paraphyletic taxon or clade: a monophyletic group that excludes one or more discrete groups descended from the most recent common ancestral species of the entire group. Other descendent species of the most recent common ancestor have been excluded from the paraphyletic taxon, usually because of morphologic distinctiveness.

Phenetic system: groupings of organisms based on mutual similarity of phenotypic (physical and chemical) characteristics. Phenetic groupings may or may not correlate with evolutionary relationships.


Phylogenetic system: groups organisms based on shared evolutionary heritage. DNA and RNA sequencing techniques are considered to give the most meaningful phylogenies.

Phylogenetic separation into evolutionary relationships (clades), based on comparison of genomes is likely to supplant phenotypical (phenetic) taxonomies of the prokaryotes.

Peripatry (paripatry) is a subset of allopatry in which an isolated group has a smaller population than the parent group. Ernst Mayr introduced the term. Peripatric speciation occurs when the smaller sub-group of a species enters a novel niche within the range of the parent species, becoming geographically and reproductively isolated. Peripatric speciation (paripatric) is distinguished from allopatric speciation by the smaller size of the isolate group, and from sympatric speciation, which involves no barrier to breeding.

Polyphyletic taxon: opposite to monophyletic taxon: A polyphyletic group is mistakenly or improperly erected on the basis of homoplasy.—characteristics that have arisen despite not sharing a common ancestor. Homoplasy arises because of convergent evolution, parallelism, evolutionary reversals, horizontal gene transfer, or gene duplications. Polyphyletic taxa are genetically heterogeneous because members do not share a common ancestor.

Neontology is a branch of biology that emphasizes the study of modern biota (living or recent organisms) rather than fossilized organisms (paleontology).

Numerical Taxonomies are a common approach to phenetic taxonomy that employ a number of phenotypic characteristics to generate similarity coefficients that may be mapped in dendrograms. Groupings based on numerical taxonomy may or may not correlate with evolutionary relationships.

Taxonomies aim to group organisms according to shared characteristics against the background of biological diversity.

Sympatry involves no geographical separation of sub-populations of individuals. Sympatric speciation events occur most often in plants by the mechanism of polyploidy in which the number of chromosomes is doubled or tripled. John Maynard Smith proposed a model called disruptive speciation, in which homozygotes might have greater fitness than heterozygotes under some environmental conditions.

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