What assumptions do cladists make? There are three basic assumptions in cladistics: 1) Any group of organisms are related by descent from a common ancestor. 2) There is a bifurcating pattern of cladogenesis. 3) Change in characteristics occurs in lineages over time. It is only when characteristics change that we are able to recognize different lineages or groups. The convention is to call the original state of the characteristic plesiomorphic and the changed state apomorphic. The terms primitive and derived have also been used for these states, but they are often avoided by cladists, since those terms have been much abused in the past. from ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad1.html
Posted on: Wed, 04 Jun 2014 20:30:27 +0000
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