General Description and Familiar Examples
Informally, phyla can be thought of as grouping organisms based on general specialization of body plan, At the most basic level, a phylum can be defined in two ways: as a group of organisms with a certain degree of morphological or developmental similarity (the phenetic definition), or a group of organisms with a certain degree of evolutionary relatedness (the phylogenetic definition). Attempting to define a level of the Linnean hierarchy without referring to (evolutionary) relatedness is an unsatisfactory approach, but the phenetic definition is more useful when addressing questions of a morphological nature—such as how successful different body plans were.
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Famous quotes containing the words general, description, familiar and/or examples:
“The General has dedicated himself so many times, he must feel like the cornerstone of a public building.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)