Phylogenetics maps out the evolutionary relationships among organisms from "summary" of The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Phylogenetics maps out the evolutionary relationships among organisms. It is a bit like a family tree, but with a crucial difference. In your real family tree, your ancestors are always your ancestors. But in a phylogenetic tree, the 'ancestors' are not just your ancestors, they are everybody's ancestors. In other words, the 'ancestors' are hypothetical entities that we are all descended from, but they are not individuals we could ever meet. They are mathematical points in the tree. Of course, they are not really points either, any more than a species is a point. They are more like clouds of probability, or more precisely, clouds of uncertainty. They are the best guesses we can make given the evidence available. Phylogenetics is the way we turn all known organisms into a family tree. It uses the evidence of shared similarities and differences to infer evolutionary relationships. The evidence can come from all sorts of sources, such as fossils, genes, anatomy, behavior, and geographical distribution. These sources can be combined in various ways, and the results can be represented in various ways, but the basic idea is the same. Th...
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