Phylogenetic Analysis

CORE DEFINITION

Phylogenetic analysis infers the evolutionary history of a set of organisms by comparing heritable features such as gene sequences or morphology, and represents the result as a branching tree in which nodes mark divergence events. The core proposition is that similarity due to shared ancestry carries information about history, so the pattern of similarities across many features can be used to reconstruct the order in which lineages separated. The key qualification is that similarity is not always evidence of ancestry, since convergent evolution produces analogous traits in unrelated lineages, so methods must distinguish shared derived characters from independently acquired ones. The same logic is applied metaphorically to technologies, texts, and organizations.