Phylogeneticist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A scientist who investigates the evolutionary history and ancestral relationships among different organisms or species
2. A researcher who analyzes how organisms are related through common descent and constructs evolutionary family trees
3. A biologist specializing in determining and understanding the branching patterns of evolution that connect all living things

Etymology: "Phylogeneticist" is a modern scientific compound, built in English from two pieces that each have their own long history. The first piece, "phylo-", comes from the Ancient Greek "phûlon", meaning tribe, race or class, from the verb "phúō", to grow or bring forth. The second piece, "geneticist", is the English word for a person who studies genetics, so the whole term names a specialist in the evolutionary relationships between organisms, traced through their genetic makeup. The ending "-ist" has a longer path. It descends from Ancient Greek "-ístēs", an agent suffix, passed through Latin "-ista" and Old French "-iste" before reaching Middle English, and it now marks a person who practises or specialises in something. Its pieces were assembled by English speakers in the modern era, not by the ancient Greeks, who had no word for a phylogenetic specialist.

Synonyms: phylogenetist, evolutionary biologist