Cladistics

Cladistics (from Greek κλάδος, klados, i.e. "branch") is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized based on shared derived characteristics that can be traced to a group's most recent common ancestor and are not present in more distant ancestors. Therefore, members of a group are assumed to share a common history and are considered to be closely related.

The techniques and nomenclature of cladistics have been applied to other disciplines. (See Phylogenetic nomenclature and the relevant section below).

History

The original methods used in cladistic analysis and the school of taxonomy derived from the work of the German entomologist Willi Hennig, who referred to it as phylogenetic systematics (also the title of his 1966 book); the terms "cladistics" and "clade" were popularized by other researchers. Cladistics in the original sense refers to a particular set of methods used in phylogenetic analysis, although it is now sometimes used to refer to the whole field.

Cladistics (journal)

Cladistics is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal publishing research in cladistics. It is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the Willi Hennig Society. Cladistics publishes papers relevant to evolution, systematics, and integrative biology. Papers of both a conceptual or philosophical nature, discussions of methodology, empirical studies on taxonomic groups from animals to bacteria, and applications of systematics in disciplines such as genomics and paleontology are accepted. Five types of paper appear in the journal: reviews, regular papers, forum papers, letters to the editor, and book reviews. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2014impact factor of 6.217, ranking it 6th out of 46 journals in the category "Evolutionary Biology". Its editor-in-chief is Dennis Wm. Stevenson.

External links