Phylogenetics
Study of evolutionary history through heritable traits and phylogenetic trees.
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Phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary history and relationships among individuals, groups of organisms, or other biological entities with evolutionary histories.[1] It attempts to explain evolutionary relatedness among various groups through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices.[2] A phylogenetic tree diagram, which can be rooted or unrooted, shows the inferred evolutionary history and hypothetical connections among the observed entities, such as living taxa or fossils.[3][4]
Quick Facts
- Field
- Biology, systematics
- Known for
- Phylogenetic inference
- phylogenetic trees
- evolutionary relationships
- Methods
- Parsimony
- maximum likelihood
- Bayesian inference
- neighbor joining
Facts from the source article.
Key facts and history
The term "phylogeny" derives from the German Phylogenie, introduced by Haeckel in 1866.[5] In the 1960s to 1970s, microbial phylogenetics emerged and scientists began creating phylogenetic trees based on nucleic acids and protein sequencing rather than on anatomy and physiology.[2] One of the most notable contributors to microbial phylogenetics is Carl Woese.[2] Before 1950, phylogenetic inferences were typically communicated as narrative scenarios, which were frequently vague and did not have clear standards for judging different hypotheses.[6]
Computational techniques that apply an optimality criterion, such as parsimony, maximum likelihood, and MCMC-based Bayesian inference, are the standard approaches for phylogenetic inference.[7] Within systematics, phylogenetics interprets the evolutionary relationships and origins of species by examining both their similarities and differences in characteristics.[8] A widely held view among many systematists is that only groups that are monophyletic should be given formal taxonomic names.[9]
What the research sources say
The Biology Online account states that phylogenetics provides information for use during the identification and classification of organisms.[2] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that phylogenetics lies at the heart of linking the fields of systematics and population genetics.[1] The same source describes phylogenetics as the backbone of biological inference more generally.[1] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also reports that historically, phylogenetics emerged out of the larger field of biological systematics.[1]
The Biology LibreTexts account by Harris states that the goal of taxonomy today is to produce a formal system for naming and classifying species to illustrate their evolutionary relationships.[10]
References
- "Phylogenetic Inference", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 15 February 2024. facts only, no text reused. plato.stanford.edu
- "phylogeny", Biology online. facts only, no text reused. biology-online.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "phylogeny", Biology online (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Itzik, "Phylogenetic Trees", www.cs.tau.ac.il, 1 January 2001 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Harper, "Phylogeny", 2010; Stuessy 2009 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Richard C. Brusca & Gary J. Brusca (2003). Invertebrates (2nd ed.). Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates. .; Bock, W. J. (2004). Explanations in systematics. Pp. 49–56. In Williams, D. M. and Forey, P. L. (eds) Milestones in Systematics. London: Systematics Association; Auyang, Sunny Y. (1998). Narratives and Theories in Natural History. In: Foundations of complex-system theories: in economics, evolutionary biology, and statist (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Phylogenetic Inference", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 15 February 2024 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Harris, "Taxonomy & Phylogeny", Biology LibreTexts, 23 June 2019 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Phylogenetics" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Wiley, "Phylogenetics: theory and practice of phylogenetic systematics", Wiley-Blackwell, 2011; Zhang, "Why we should not describe new taxa without using phylogenetics. Comment on Chen et al. (2025)", Journal of Natural History, 2025, p. 2355–2359 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Harris, "Taxonomy & Phylogeny", Biology LibreTexts, 23 June 2019. facts only, no text reused. bio.libretexts.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Phylogenetics (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Phylogenetics (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the , each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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