Question

What are some examples of clades?

Answer 1

Clades are a grouping of organisms that have a common ancestor and all of the ancestor’s descendants. Phylogeny can identify whether a lineage is a clade or not.

Complete answer:
-’Clade’ was coined by English biologist Julian Huxley.
-Clades are a grouping of organisms that have a common ancestor and all of the ancestor’s descendants. The organisms within a clade are monophyletic. Their ancestors and descendants can be extinct or living.
-The branching in the phylogeny of a clade denotes evolutionary history.
-Clades are depicted using phylogenetic trees or by constructing cladograms. A clade within a clade is called a nested clade.
-The presence of an immediate common ancestor between clades, may make them sister clades.
-In a phylogenetic tree, the bottom most vertical or horizontal stem represents the last common ancestor of that tree.
-Some examples of clades are as follows: Humans, gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees belong to the Hominoid clade; rats; other clades like alligatoridae and crocodylidae belong to a phylogeny of crocodilians.

Note:
-There are three popular ways to define a clade name. They include node-based, branch-based, or apomorphy-based methods.
-Cladistics is the approach used to classify organisms in clades based on their common ancestry. The term was coined by Ernst Meyer.