Evolutionary Taxonomy

Evolutionary taxonomy, evolutionary systematics or Darwinian classification is a branch of biological classification that seeks to classify organisms using a combination of phylogenetic relationship and degree of evolutionary changes. This type of taxonomy considers taxa rather than single species, so that groups of species give rise to new groups. The concept found its current form in the modern evolutionary synthesis of the early 1940s.

Evolutionary taxonomy differs from strict pre-Darwinian Linnaean taxonomy, which produces orderly lists rather than trees. Also, unlike cladism which only maps phylogeny, evolutionary taxonomy also offers a biological classification system. While in phylogeny where each taxon must consist of a single ancestral node and all its descendants, evolutionary taxonomy allows for groups to be excluded from their parent taxa (e.g. dinosaurs are not considered to include birds, but to have given rise to them), thus allowing for paraphyletic taxa.