- published: 05 Oct 2014
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A clade (from Ancient Greek: κλάδος, klados, "branch") is a group of organisms that consists of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants, and represents a single "branch" on the "tree of life".
The common ancestor may be an individual, a population, a species (extinct or extant), and so on right up to a kingdom. Clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently.
Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades; that is, taxa that are not monophyletic.
The term "clade" was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley to refer to the result of cladogenesis, a concept Huxley borrowed from Bernhard Rensch.
Many commonly named groups are clades, for example, rodents, or insects; because in each case, their name comprises a common ancestor with all its descendant branches. Rodents, for example, are a branch of mammals that split off after the end of the period when the clade Dinosauria stopped being the dominant terrestrial vertebrates 66 million years ago. The original population and all its descendants are a clade. The rodent clade corresponds to the order Rodentia, and insects to the class Insecta. These clades include smaller clades, such as chipmunk or ant, each of which comprises even smaller clades. The clade "rodent" is in turn included in the mammal, vertebrate and animal clades.
Can't see too many more
Can't see them anymore
Waving from afar
Can you come back soon
We wish we could
We think we've gone too far
On this ship of fools
We think we've gone too far
On this ship of fools
And now I walk ashore
Searching for my soul
Body sea and sky
Body sea and sky
Cast upon this sea
Is this ship of fools
Cast upon this sea
Is this ship of fools
They're all aboard
Except for me
Can we come back soon
We wish we could
We think we've gone too far
On this ship of fools
On this ship of fools
On this ship of fools
Now I walk the shore
Searching for my soul
Body sea and sky
I was born sea and sky
In this ship of fool
In this ship of fools
Cast upon this sea
Is this ship of fools
We think we've gone too far
We think we've gone too far
We think we've gone too far