Paleo-Terms

• Apomorphy- a derived or specialized trait.
  
• Plesiomorphy- primitive trait.
  
• Automorphy- specialization unique to one group.
  
• Synomorphy- specialized trait shared by two or more groups.
  
• Symplesiomorphy- shared primitive trait.
  
• Character- any recognizeable attribute of an organism.
  
• Character State- presence or absence of a particulat attribute.
  
• Morphocline- characters that very quantatively within a group.
  
• Monophyletic- united species sharing a common ancestry.
  
• Polyphyletic- evolved from two or more distinct ancestors.
  
• Homology- similiarity of individual structures that belong to different species within a monophyletic group.
  
• Convergent- characters similar in structure and function.
  
• Parallelism- pattern that results in non- homologous characters.
  
• Homoplasy- a synonym for convergence.
  
• Parsimony- more logical to accept a hypothesis that depends on a small number of processes rather than based on a large number of independant processes.
  
• Palacity- means for determining the direction of evolutionary change of characters.
  
• Cladogram- shows the specific derived characters.