“Cladus” and clade: a taxonomic odyssey

Abstract

The fate of "clade," both as concept and word, is reconstructed here beginning with its first appearance in 1866 as "Cladus," in Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie, continuing up to the present. Although central to phylogenetics, the concept of clade is paradoxical since it has been ambiguously understood or even misunderstood by its own promoters. Writings by Ernst Haeckel, Lucien Cuénot, and Julian Huxley, the three authors who discussed the notion of clade at length, are analyzed here in detail as a means of exploring this paradox. First conceived as a rank for a higher-level category, and later as a taxon, the clade is understood today in connection with Hennig's definition of a monophyletic group rather than through Huxley's successful but somehow ambiguous formalization. The inability of these authors to formulate a clear-cut exposition of the concept is considered here within three contexts: firstly, the burden of pre-Darwinian classifications based on similarity; secondly, the underestimation of Darwin's description of a genealogical group; and thirdly, the predominance of thinking in process (vs thinking in pattern), which was the basis of evolutionary systematics in the mid-twentieth century.

From Genes to Genomes: Opportunities and Challenges for Synteny-based Phylogenies

“…To build phylogenetic trees, diverse data types have been used and our understanding of the Tree of Life has undergone significant transformations with each technological and methodological advance. Early approaches from the mid-1800′s relied on comparative morphology among extant species, where features such as leaves and skeletal structures were analyzed to infer the phylogenies of plants and animals, respectively [2][3][4]. However, morphology-based phylogenies often yielded incongruence (conflicting phylogenetic hypotheses) [5], undermining confidence in the inferred evolutionary histories.…”