Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A phenetic system of taxonomic classification.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun systematics : A form of
numerical systematics in which organisms are grouped based upon the total or relative number of shared characteristics.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word phenetics.
Examples
-
It can be distinguished from other taxonomic systems, such as phenetics, by its focus on evolutionary relationships; while other systems usually use morphological similarities to group similar species into genera,
-
It can be distinguished from other taxonomic systems, such as phenetics, by its focus on evolutionary relationships; while other systems usually use morphological similarities to group similar species into genera, families and other higher level classification, cladistics tries to construct a tree representing the ancestry of organisms and species.
-
Sure, it's pure phenetics, and of course the methodology and assumptions have been widely criticised, but their discoveries cannot simply be disregarded.
Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006
-
After all, it's DNA-DNA hybridisation -- pure, absolute phenetics.
Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006
-
Except when it's not (neighbour-joining, or the extinct UPGMA); then it's phenetics (= a mere measure of similarity in %, without even trying to tell retained from derived features).
Happy Christmas, from gigantic Spanish sauropods... or, alas, poor ‘Angloposeidon’ Darren Naish 2006
-
Could the discussion of kinds in Genesis and Leviticus actually be an early attempt at producing the first taxomic field guide based on phenetics.
-
Though I was once told that if I didn’t include two successive outgroups in an analysis, I was just doing phenetics.
Creationist vs. creationist on Homo habilis - The Panda's Thumb 2010
Comments
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.