Phylogenie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The evolutionary development and descent of a species or group of organisms from their common ancestors
2. The historical record of how a particular organism or biological group evolved and diverged from related forms
3. The sequence of evolutionary changes that produced a species or group and shows its relationships to other living things

Etymology: In 1866 the German biologist Ernst Haeckel published "Generelle Morphologie der Organismen" and introduced "Phylogenie" to name the evolutionary history of a species or group, the line of descent connecting its ancestors. He built it from the Greek "phylon," meaning tribe, race, or kind, and "genesis," origin. He set it against "Ontogenie," the development of a single individual from egg to adult, and the two terms were meant to be read together. Haeckel went further than most of his contemporaries. He argued that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, meaning an embryo passes through stages resembling its ancestors' adult forms. That claim, usually summarized as the biogenetic law, was overstated and is no longer accepted in that form. The terminology he coined, however, survived and now describes the reconstruction of evolutionary trees from shared traits and genetic data.