Glossary of terms used in phylogeny reconstruction Glossary of terms used in Phylogeny Reconstruction. This is an individual, a strain, a species or any unit of classification. In phylogeny reconstruction, the contemporary or hypothetical ancestral strain, species or whatever, is known as a taxon. A hypothetical ancestor, a fossil and a clade are also known as taxa. Taxonomy This is the scientific discipline of naming organisms.
Taxonomy is one of the three branches of Systematics .
This is a ratio of the number of transition to transversion substitutions that appear to have occurred since two sequences separated from a common ancestor. This is the average rate of transition versus transversion substitutions in a dataset. This is a value, estimated by reference to a tree that describes the average rate of transition to transversion substitutions during the evolutionary period covered by the tree. This is a substitution of a purine for a pyrimidine or vice versa . This is a heuristic algorithm for searching through treespace.