Polyphyletic Definition

Polyphyletic Sentence Examples

• 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.

• He was, however, the first to show clearly that the Ratitae are the retrograde descendants of flying ancestors, that the various groups of surviving Ratitae are, as such, a polyphyletic group, and he has gone fully into the interesting question of the development and subsequent loss of the power of flight, a loss which has taken place not only in different orders of birds but also at various geological periods, and is still taking place.

• A collective polyphyletic or heterogeneous group, originally cosmopolitan; with certainty existing since the Miocene.

• Relationships And Phylogeny The Hexapoda form a very clearly defined class of the Arthropoda, and many recent writers have suggested that they must have arisen independently of other Arthropods from annelid worms, and that the Arthropoda must, therefore, be regarded as an " unnatural," polyphyletic assemblage.

• The polyphyletic law was early demonstrated among invertebrates by Neumayr (1889) when he showed that the ammonite genus Phylloceras follows not one but five distinct lines of evolution of unequal duration.