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:
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—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
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—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
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—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“No rules exist, and examples are simply life-savers answering the appeals of rules making vain attempts to exist.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)