Cladistics & Reclassification
- The development of DNA sequencing technology means that classification can now be carried out on the basis of evolutionary relationship
- Organisms classified in this way are grouped into clades
- Historically, organisms would have been classified on the basis of observed traits, which often led to organisms being classified into groups that were not true clades
- This resulted from analogous characteristics being incorrectly thought to be homologous
- The use of DNA sequencing to classify organisms has led to discoveries of classification errors and the need to reclassify organisms
- Some species have been reclassified into different groups of organisms
- Some groups of organisms have been split
- Some groups have been merged
- Classifying organisms correctly according to their clade is important to ensure that groups of organisms are close evolutionary relatives
- This means that the characteristics of one group member can be predicted on the basis of the characteristics of another