A clade, also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, the equivalent Latin term cladus is sometimes used in taxonomical literature.
In biology, evolution is the change in heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules.
Paleontology, also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch. It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term has been used since 1822 formed from Greek παλαιός, ὄν, and λόγος.
Zoology is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. The term is derived from Ancient Greek ζῷον, zōion ('animal'), and λόγος, logos.
A phylogenetic tree is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological species or other entities based upon similarities and differences in their physical or genetic characteristics. All life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry.
The molecular clock is a figurative term for a technique that uses the mutation rate of biomolecules to deduce the time in prehistory when two or more life forms diverged. The biomolecular data used for such calculations are usually nucleotide sequences for DNA, RNA, or amino acid sequences for proteins. The benchmarks for determining the mutation rate are often fossil or archaeological dates. The molecular clock was first tested in 1962 on the hemoglobin protein variants of various animals, and is commonly used in molecular evolution to estimate times of speciation or radiation. It is sometimes called a gene clock or an evolutionary clock.
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life forms on Earth. Evolution holds that all species are related and gradually change over generations. In a population, the genetic variations affect the phenotypes of an organism. These changes in the phenotypes will be an advantage to some organisms, which will then be passed onto their offspring. Some examples of evolution in species over many generations are the peppered moth and flightless birds. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biology emerged through what Julian Huxley called the modern synthesis of understanding, from previously unrelated fields of biological research, such as genetics and ecology, systematics, and paleontology.
The class Osteostraci is an extinct taxon of bony-armored jawless fish, termed "ostracoderms", that lived in what is now North America, Europe and Russia from the Middle Silurian to Late Devonian.
Evidence of common descent of living organisms has been discovered by scientists researching in a variety of disciplines over many decades, demonstrating that all life on Earth comes from a single ancestor. This forms an important part of the evidence on which evolutionary theory rests, demonstrates that evolution does occur, and illustrates the processes that created Earth's biodiversity. It supports the modern evolutionary synthesis—the current scientific theory that explains how and why life changes over time. Evolutionary biologists document evidence of common descent, all the way back to the last universal common ancestor, by developing testable predictions, testing hypotheses, and constructing theories that illustrate and describe its causes.
The tree of life or universal tree of life is a metaphor, model and research tool used to explore the evolution of life and describe the relationships between organisms, both living and extinct, as described in a famous passage in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859).
The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.
Terrabacteria is a taxon containing approximately two-thirds of prokaryote species, including those in the gram positive phyla as well as the phyla "Cyanobacteria", Chloroflexota, and Deinococcota.
A ghost lineage is a hypothesized ancestor in a species lineage that has left no fossil evidence yet can be inferred to exist because of gaps in the fossil record or genomic evidence. The process of determining a ghost lineage relies on fossilized evidence before and after the hypothetical existence of the lineage and extrapolating relationships between organisms based on phylogenetic analysis. Ghost lineages assume unseen diversity in the fossil record and serve as predictions for what the fossil record could eventually yield; these hypotheses can be tested by unearthing new fossils or running phylogenetic analyses.
TimeTree is a free public database developed by S. Blair Hedges and Sudhir Kumar, now at Temple University, for presenting times of divergence in the tree of life.. The basic concept has been to produce and present a community consensus of the timetree of life from published studies, and allow easy access to that information on the web or mobile device. The database permits searching for average node times between two species or higher taxa, viewing a timeline from the perspective of a taxon, which shows all divergences back to the origin of life, and building a timetree of a chosen taxon or user-submitted group of taxa. TimeTree has been used in public education to conceptualize the evolution of life, such as in high school settings. David Attenborough's Emmy Award-winning film and television program Rise of Animals used Hedges and Kumar's circular timetree of life, generated from the TimeTree database, as a framework for the production. The timetree was brought to life using animated computer-generated imagery in scenes every 10 minutes during the 2-hour movie. The original development of TimeTree, by Hedges and Kumar, dates to the late 1990s, with initial support from NASA Astrobiology Institute. Since then, it has been supported by additional grants from NASA, and by NSF and NIH. The current version (v5) was released in 2022 and contains data from 4,075 studies and 137,306 species.
Hydrobacteria is a taxon containing approximately one-third of prokaryote species, mostly gram-negative bacteria and their relatives. It was found to be the closest relative of an even larger group of Bacteria, Terrabacteria, which are mostly gram positive bacteria. The name Hydrobacteria refers to the moist environment inferred for the common ancestor of those species. In contrast, species of Terrabacteria possess adaptations for life on land.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to evolution:
Reticulate evolution, or network evolution is the origination of a lineage through the partial merging of two ancestor lineages, leading to relationships better described by a phylogenetic network than a bifurcating tree. Reticulate patterns can be found in the phylogenetic reconstructions of biodiversity lineages obtained by comparing the characteristics of organisms. Reticulation processes can potentially be convergent and divergent at the same time. Reticulate evolution indicates the lack of independence between two evolutionary lineages. Reticulation affects survival, fitness and speciation rates of species.
Stephen Blair Hedges is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science and director of the Center for Biodiversity at Temple University where he researches the tree of life and leads conservation efforts in Haiti and elsewhere. He co-founded Haiti National Trust.
Triumph of the Vertebrates is a 2013 British documentary film by David Attenborough. It is about the evolution of vertebrates. The first part is From the Seas to the Skies, while the second part is Dawn of the Mammals. The film uses a circular timetree of life generated by scientists S. Blair Hedges and Sudhir Kumar, from their TimeTree database, as a temporal framework for the production. The timetree was brought to life using animated computer-generated imagery in scenes every 10 minutes during the 2-hour movie. The circular timetree was published by Hedges and Kumar in 2009 and Hedges was consulted during production of the film.
The Amerophidia, also known as amerophidian snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains two families: Aniliidae and the boa-like Tropidophiidae.
Afrophidia is a clade of alethinophidian snakes comprising the groups Henophidia and Caenophidia, essentially making up the snakes people commonly associate with. The name refers to the deep split between Afrophidia and their sister taxon, Amerophidia, which originated in South American origin, and the afrophidians was recently hypothesized to represent a vicariant event of the breakup of Gondwanan South America and Africa.
