paraphyly

Also known as paraphyletic, paraphylesis, paraphyleticity, paraphyletism

thumb|300px|In this phylogenetic tree, the green group is paraphyletic; it is composed of a common ancestor (the lowest green vertical stem) and some of its descendants, but it excludes the blue group (a monophyletic group) which diverged from the green group.

AI overview

A paraphyletic group is a set of organisms that includes a common ancestor and some—but not all—of its descendants, leaving out other descendant groups that branched off from it. Scientists generally avoid using paraphyletic groups in formal classification because they don't cleanly represent the actual branches of evolutionary history the way more complete groupings do.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

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Encyclopedic overview

12 sections

Contents

Etymology
Phylogenetics
In cladistics
Examples
Paraphyly in species
Uses for paraphyletic groups
Linguistics
See also
Explanatory notes
References
Bibliography
External links

Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic with respect to the excluded subgroups. In contrast, a monophyletic grouping (a clade) includes a common ancestor and all of its descendants.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “paraphyly” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

paraphyly

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