Clade

A clade (from Ancient Greek: κλάδος, klados, "branch") is a group of organisms that consists of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants, and represents a single "branch" on the "tree of life".

The common ancestor may be an individual, a population, a species (extinct or extant), and so on right up to a kingdom. Clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently.

Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming taxa that are not clades.

