Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to a group of taxa that does not include the common ancestor of all the members.
- adjective Of or derived from more than one stock or source.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to or derived from several phyla; having several different lines of descent: as, a polyphyletic origin.
- Of or pertaining to the doctrine or theory that animals are not monophyletic, but are severally and specially created, or at least derived from many different sources.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective (Biol.) Pertaining to, or characterized by, descent from more than one root form, or from many different root forms; polygenetic; -- opposed to
monophyletic .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective biology Having multiple
ancestral sources; referring to ataxon that does not contain the most recent common ancestor of its members.
Etymologies
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Examples
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It is called polyphyletic evolution, which means that God created numerous stocks, or beginnings of both plant and animal life, which were subject to change and growth, deterioration and development, according to his plan and purpose.
The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved In 50 Arguments
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Warm-bloodedness is polyphyletic and is found in two broad classes, mammals (modified in bats) and aves.
A New Book 2010
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In a striking parallel, Lupas et al. have proposed that modern protein folds evolved by recombination of ancient peptide modules, such that the folds have independent and polyphyletic origins although they all ultimately derive from the same recombining pool of genetic elements encoding primordial peptides.
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Zach: Warm-bloodedness is polyphyletic and is found in two broad classes, mammals (modified in bats) and aves.
A New Book 2010
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If not, we are into paraphyletic or polyphyletic taxa.
(UPDATED) Another half-brained science headline - The Panda's Thumb 2009
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To further thicken the plot, I should add that most marine snails, the polyphyletic prosobranchs, have their eyes at the bases of their 1 pair of tentacles and many have opercula.
Assiminea succinea AYDIN 2008
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To further thicken the plot, I should add that most marine snails, the polyphyletic prosobranchs, have their eyes at the bases of their 1 pair of tentacles and many have opercula.
Archive 2008-03-01 AYDIN 2008
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In a study of osteological and soft-tissue characters, Mayr & Clarke (2003) also found gruiforms to be polyphyletic: rails, trumpeters and cranes (referred to from hereon as the ‘gruiform core’) were one of the most basal groups within Neoaves, bustards were without close relatives, and seriemas formed a clade with … .. hoatzins.
Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006
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In a study of osteological and soft-tissue characters, Mayr & Clarke (2003) also found gruiforms to be polyphyletic: rails, trumpeters and cranes (referred to from hereon as the ‘gruiform core’) were one of the most basal groups within Neoaves, bustards were without close relatives, and seriemas formed a clade with … .. hoatzins.
Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006
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This implies the extinction of the original taxon is real, and the two taxa are polyphyletic.
Elvis Has Left The Building The Nag 2007
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