Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An evolved character or trait unique to a particular phylogenetic group of organisms. The vertebral column is an apomorphy of vertebrates.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun systematics : A
derived characteristic of aclade . Any feature novel to a species and its descendants.
Etymologies
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Examples
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A characteristic that occurs only in later descendants is called an apomorphy (meaning "separate form" or "far from form," as in far from the root ancestor; also called a "derived" state) for that group.
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Similarly, morphospecies can clearly be non-monophyletic; all it takes is one apomorphy in some population.
(UPDATED) Another half-brained science headline - The Panda's Thumb 2009
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Anything that is later in the tree and has changed is considered “evolved”, or technically an “apomorphy”, the English of which means “derived”.
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However, there exist some striking differences between them: the trnR-UCG gene represents a putative molecular apomorphy of tree ferns; and the repeats observed at one inversion endpoint may be a vestige of some unknown rearrangement (s).
BioMed Central - Latest articles Lei Gao 2009
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Only afterwards, with apomorphy within the higher primates.
nuxiy commented on the word apomorphy
"Novel evolutionary trait that is unique to a particular species and all its descendants and which can be used as a defining character for a species or group in phylogenetic terms. Cf. autapomorphy, synapomorphy."
- SNPA
March 21, 2009