Phyletic Definition & Meaning

Origin of Phyletic

From Greek phūletikos of or for a tribesman from phūletēs tribesman from phūlē tribe bheuə- in Indo-European roots

From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

Huxley, the sporosac is the starting-point of an evolution leading up through the various types of gonophores to the free medusa as the culminating point of a phyletic series.
When two organs can be traced along the same line of descent to one primitive form, that is when they are found to be mono phyletic, their homology is complete; when, however, they are traceable to two primitive forms, though these forms belong to the same morphological series, they are polyphyletic and therefore only incompletely homologous.
Each of these schools impresses its pupils, in the case of the birds, with its own stamp, but there are many combinations, since in the course of phyletic development many a group of birds has exchanged one school for another.
On account of the presence and mode of origin (from the gut-wall) of this organ Bateson introduced the term hemichorda as a phyletic name for the class Enteropneusta.
The collective term " mutation," as now employed by palaeontologists, signifies a type modified to a slight degree in one or more of its characters along a progressive or definite line of phyletic development.

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