Clade

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /kleɪd/
• Rhymes: -eɪd

Origin

From Ancient Greek κλάδος ("shoot, branch"); coined 1957 by biologist Julian Huxley.

Full definition of clade

Noun

1. (biology, systematics) A group of animals or other organisms derived from a common ancestor species.
• 2001, Ross H. Nehm, 6: Linking Evolutionary Pattern and Development Process in Marginellid Gastropods, Alan H. Cheetham, Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Scott Lidgard, Frank K. McKinney (editors), Evolutionary Patterns: Growth, Form, and Tempo in the Fossil Record, page 166,All three clades containing Prunum and “Volvarina” species contain morphological features that do not collectively appear in any other living or fossil marginellid species (see above).
• 2002, Stephen Jay Gould, , page 1092,No one has ever tabulated the number or percentage of non-trending clades within larger monophyletic groups. The concept of a non-trending clade — the higher level analog of a species in stasis — has never been explicitly formulated at all. If only one percent of clades exhibited sustained trends, we would still focus our attention upon this tiny minority in telling our favored version of the story of life's history.
• 2004 September 11, Bob Holmes, Linnean naming system faces challengers, New Scientist, page 13,A clade is made up of an ancestral species and all its descendants; think of it as that part of an evolutionary tree that would fall off with a single saw cut.
2. (genetics) A higher level grouping of a genetic haplogroup.

Derived terms

• cladist
• cladistic
• cladistics
• cladogenesis
• cladogram

Anagrams

• decal
• E.D. Cal.
• laced