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Unable-Fox-312 t1_iy5j9i5 wrote

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

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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