Phylogenetics

Phylogenetics is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among individuals or groups of organisms. These relationships are discovered through phylogenetic inference methods that evaluate observed heritable traits.

History

The term "phylogenetics" comes from the Greek words "phyle/phylon" meaning "tribe/race" and "genetikos" meaning "relative to birth". The concept of phylogenetics was first introduced by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, but the practice of classifying organisms has been around since Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century.

Methodology

Phylogenetics uses various types of analytical methods to evaluate observable heritable traits, most commonly DNA sequences, but also other types of data such as morphological data, immunological data, genetic distance data and biochemical data.

Phylogenetic Trees

A common method for depicting the results of these analyses is a phylogenetic tree. Phylogenetic trees are diagrams that depict the evolutionary relationships among a set of organisms or groups of organisms, called taxa.

Applications

Phylogenetics is used in the field of molecular biology, evolutionary biology, ecology, epidemiology, and biogeography.

See Also

• Cladistics
• Computational phylogenetics
• Molecular phylogenetics
• Phylogenetic comparative methods
• Phylogenetic network
• Phylogenetic tree

References

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