Talk:Clade

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Yes this still needs work. Key issues are:

• What should usefully be here? As opposed to just referring to cladistics
• What is the exact definition of a clade? As opposed to how the word is used commonly. And how should this exact definition relate to this entry?

It bears thinking on, exact definitions are not easily written (and even less easily accepted). Brya 09:01, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, dear. I'm afraid I agree with Elijahmeeks. I'm not a *complete* idiot, but I barely understood a word of this article. Which is too bad - this is a very interesting topic. Perhaps some expert/editor could try this: imagine you're talking with a bright high school student -- start with the basics, without jargon, then move up to exacting terminology you require to be precise. JamestownArarat 01:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monophyly, paraphyly and polyphyly

(Moved from talk:phylogenetics)

These should all be merged into one article, probably this one. I don't think they have the potential to stand on their own, and this article needs more detail anyway. Richard001 08:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

As long as there is a stub that links people to the article on phylogeny, this would be fine. There should definitely be discussion of these topics on the phylogeny page.

Yeah, merge it since monophyly paraphyly and other methods of organization are organized as a parts of phylogenetics in most scientific literature.Wiki wiki1 01:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Apparently paraphyly is also known as an 'evolutionary grade. We need a place which mentions such concept which is useful when talking about the now-discredited progressive evolution. See the 'Sauropsids' section (just search for it) in the article The Ancestor's Tale. Fred Hsu 03:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Agree, I can't see these articles growing to be much more than dictionary definitions once repetitions are done away with. Bendž|Ť 19:02, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I had a look to see if the word 'phyly' was used as a stand-alone term to describe the three forms, but I've only see it used once. Compare with say ploidy, which is used commonly. We could either move them all the somewhat contrived phyly, or merge them here - which is best? Richard001 07:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I've moved the target page to clade, as a monophyletic group and a clade are the same thing. This is probably the best article to redirect them to. Richard001 06:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Agree. These three terms are very critical, but individual articles become simply dictionary entries. They key is realizing that any discussion of _one_ of the terms requires comparison with the other two terms. Thus, they should all be in one article. The real question is: what article? The only two candidates are Clade and Cladistics. Cladistics is obviously the "main" go-to article for the topic. But the "Clade" article is more specific, and its thrust is defining a certain kind of organism-grouping. Which is what these three articles are doing. Hence, these three articles would naturally fit into the Clade article. So I think it would be okay to merge these three articles into Clade.

Noleander 21:53, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. None of these four articles are dictionary definitions. Hundreds of articles link to these articles, so whatever decision is made should not be taken lightly, and should be brought to the attention of WP:TOL and the various animal and plant WikiProjects which link to these articles. Also, -phyly is a suffix, not a word. Firsfron of Ronchester 09:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. There's more than enough information on each separate terms to keep them as different pages, though I do agree all the articles need to be fleshed out quite a bit. I'd help but I haven't had much free time as of recent. --Kugamazog 01:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Disagree. Giving these their own space makes it much more likely that editors will work up the best means for easily getting across the important distinctions right away, and there's plenty further to go into from there. Many folks still have a lot of "common sense" learning in this area, which would be much more readily updated with separate articles that folks manage to elegantly or at least clearly and plainly present these critical points of understanding. Linguistics articles here can often be the opposite of what I mean, but browsing about animals is likely a less esoteric exploration; the potential to illuminate things for curious folks coming by via popular articles is pretty great. --chaizzilla (talk) 17:42, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

AndrewBolt (talk) 08:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC) I was redirected to the Clade page by a link to Monophyletic. The summary for the page says that a clade is a monophyletic group. This is not very helpful since that is the very term I'm trying to understand. There is enough information in the article body to figure it out, but it would be if the summary didn't give an explanation in terms of the words that redirect to the page.