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Dorocche t1_iy5et4w wrote

Reply to comment by Unable-Fox-312 in Eli5: Why do birds and fish come in such a spectacular variety of colors and shapes compared to other animals? by thetravelman888

No monophyletic branch. But there's a paraphyletic branch, and a definition based on that won't be any less objective or consistent.

I have heard good things about the podcast, though

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Unable-Fox-312 t1_iy5j9i5 wrote

I assume paraphyletic is a short way of saying basically the thing I just did: "there is a single fish branch if you're okay with a bunch of non-fish in it"

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MrSquiddy74 t1_iy77s15 wrote

Sort of?

Paraphyletic is saying "everything in this evolutionary branch except these things".

Take reptiles for example. In common usage, it excludes birds, even though birds are a subset of dinosaurs, which are a subset of reptiles.

The exclusion of birds from the reptile "group" makes it paraphyletic.

Also fun fact! The most closely related animal group to birds is actually crocodilians (crocodiles, alligators, etc)

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