Phylogeny

The branching pattern of ancestor–descendant relationships among “taxa” (eg, species or their genes) is called a “phylogeny.” “Phylogenetics” is the process of attempting to estimate these historical relationships by examining information such as DNA, protein sequences, or morphological (shape) characters from extant taxa. This information is generally presented using a mathematical tree – a structure used to describe the evolutionary history of the taxa at a high level. These trees come in several different varieties and can be inferred in several different ways. There is a great amount of effort being put into methods of estimating trees, as well as determining particular phylogenies for species of interest.