clade

noun

1. A group of animals or other organisms derived from a common ancestor species.

   “All three clades containing Prunum and “Volvarina” species contain morphological features that do not collectively appear in any other living or fossil marginellid species (see above).”

   “No one has ever tabulated the number or percentage of non-trending clades within larger monophyletic groups. The concept of a non-trending clade — the higher level analog of a species in stasis — has never been explicitly formulated at all. If only one percent of clades exhibited sustained trends, we would still focus our attention upon this tiny minority in telling our favored version of the story of life's history.”

   “A clade is made up of an ancestral species and all its descendants; think of it as that part of an evolutionary tree that would fall off with a single saw cut.”

2. A higher level grouping of a genetic haplogroup.

verb

1. To be part of a clade; to form a clade.

   “The phylogenetic tree for CiCBR shows it clades with the human cannabinoid receptors rather than with those other human GPCRs which most closely resemble the cannabinoid receptors.”