• sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    You can’t evolve out of a clade, or so they say.

    Of course it’s not helpful to call humans and whales fishes in common parlance. But in phylogenetics, why not?

    • lugal@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Because that would make fish and vertebrates synonyms so why not drop the former altogether?

      • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        Words can mean more than one thing thought, and depending on the context it can be useful to convey the fact that the vertebrates all evolved from fish-like ancestors, or that whales are more closely related to some fish than those fish are related to other fish.

        • lugal@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          And it’s totally valid to use it that way even though I wouldn’t. That’s the “You decide” part of my first comment