Cladistics

Abstract

Cladistics is a class of methods of biological classification that groups taxa hierarchically into discrete sets and subsets. This article presents the principles and concepts of cladistics and describes the principal analytical methods. The operations by which observations of organisms are coded for analysis are explained, followed by the methods for reconstructing the hierarchical relationships among taxa (usually expressed as branching diagrams termed cladograms). Statistics and principles for determining the degree of fit between data and cladograms are discussed, which permit choices to be made among competing cladograms.