noun Biology.
- a branching diagram depicting the successive points of species divergence from common ancestral lines without regard to the degree of deviation.
noun
- biology a treelike diagram illustrating the development of a cladeSee clade
- A branching treelike diagram used to illustrate evolutionary (phylogenetic) relationships among organisms. Each node, or point of divergence, has two branching lines of descendance, indicating evolutionary divergence from a common ancestor. The endpoints of the tree represent individual species, and any node together with its descendant branches and subbranches constitutes a clade.