Talk:Cladogram

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Not a cladogram!

The first figure of the article, the unrooted myosin supergene family tree, is NOT a cladogram. It's distance-matrix tree! (check the abstract of the original paper). I'm removing it.

I suggest replacing it with the second figure of this paper, the famous 1999 dinosaur phylogeny of Paul Sereno, which is nicely illustrated. I think it should qualify as fair use. --Earrnz (talk) 03:03, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

simple cladistics diagram

Isn't there a bug on the second diagram? Traits B,C are shown on the line pointing to species 3 which only has trait A, it should be on the line pointing to species 1 surely? --86.179.186.239 (talk) 12:44, 23 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You're right, anonymous, thanks for pointing it out. I will correct it ASAP.--Earrnz (talk) 03:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to read a cladistics diagram

The article contains a section on what a cladistics diagram is, and a section on how to generate one. What's missing is an intermediate section on how to read one.Christopher King (talk) 14:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article incorrectly defines a cladogram. There is no consensus about the exact meaning of the term, and the second sentence contradicts itself. The nodes are the ancestors and quite clearly indicate the relationships between the terminals and the nodes, and even other nodes.See:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad3.htm

http://www.bu.edu/gk12/eric/cladogram.pdf

http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/CLAS/CLAS.Clad.html

There are a bunch of others, but I think this proves the point. 66.168.116.107 (talk) 16:50, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are right that the term is used to cover two kinds of diagram. One, the most common, is when the terminals are known taxa, extant or extinct, and the branches show the hypothesised evolutionary relationships between them. The nodes can then be interpreted as hypothetical ancestors. Note that in the Hennigian approach, if a node is given the characters inferred from a cladogram and the construction process repeated, it will become a terminal. That's what I mean by the nodes being "hypothetical" ancestors. This appears to be the usage intended by the last two links you put above (the first doesn't seem to work). The second kind of diagram is when the nodes are also known taxa and some method other than cladistics is used to construct the diagram – such diagrams are sometimes called phylograms. Unfortunately many sources are not clear on these differences.

I don't think the second sentence is as clear as it could be, but it's not contradictory: a cladogram in the original Hennigian sense is not a full evolutionary tree: the arc lengths have no meaning, and the nodes are not known ancestral taxa. All it shows is the inferred branching order. Some thought is needed as to how the second sentence can be improved. Peter coxhead (talk) 00:27, 16 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Author, I copied three sentences off of your article on Cladograms on Wikipedia. For that I deeply I apologize.I had used it for a question on one of my school tests because it had asked what a Cladogram was and I had no idea what it was so I had looked it up and I had copied it.I am really sorry. And I realize how bad what is I did. I will never do it again.I apologize for what I have done. And I feel really bad because of my actions.I aknowledge that I have plagarized and I am so very sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.78.86.101 (talk) 00:56, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]