Cladistic taxonomy is based upon

Question

A. both overall similarity and phylogenetic relatedness.

B. overall similarity only.

C. phylogenetic relatedness only.

D. is incorrect.

E. can only be applied under certain conditions.

Answer 1

Cladistics is a system that uses shared derived (i.e. newly evolved) character states to arrive at phylogenetic relatedness. When applying some sort of taxonomy to a cladogram, you're implying phylogenetic relatedness.

"Similarity" is a loaded term. Because organisms that retain a lot of ancestral character states but are quite unrelated to each other can appear very similar. Cladistics and cladistic taxonomy (like Phylocode) depend on shared derived character states and not just 'similarity.'