Courses
Courses for Kids
Free study material
Offline Centres
More
Store Icon
Store
seo-qna
SearchIcon
banner

In the classification of plants, the term cladistics refers to the
A. Phylogenetic classification
B. Sexual classification
C. Artificial classification
D. Natural classification
E. Binomial classification

Answer
VerifiedVerified
456.9k+ views
Hint: Cladistics is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups based on the most recent common ancestor or the group from which they belong. Cladistic data is also used to create cladograms, which consist of diagrams proposing a hypothesis of phylogenetic relationships between species based on shared characteristics. Today, highly advanced computational methods permit the use of multiple datasets to construct more accurate cladograms.

Complete answer:
Cladistics may be a quantitative method of classification of plants that attempts to recover evolutionary relationships, supporting observable characters. Since the dawn of history, humans have classified plants. In primitive cultures classifications were by economic use, like food, clothing, medicine, and shelter. Later the shape (morphology) of a plant became important, for instance , trees, shrubs, or herbs. Carolus Linneaus considered the similarity of floral parts to be critical, and this formed the idea of his arrangement . Each of those systems is claimed to be “artificial.” That’s , the classification was solely for a person’s purpose and didn’t plan to indicate genetic relationships between plants. Since Darwin , the goal of plant systematics has been to develop a “natural,” phylogenetic classification, one that represents the natural relationships of every species to all or any others. Cladistics was developed as a way to construct phylogenetic classifications.
Cladistics is a biological classification system and also known as phylogenetic classification.

Hence, the correct answer is option (A).

Note: Cladistics is the term used for biological classification of organisms which are categorised in groups belonging to the most common ancestors and cladistics is one of the ways to classify phylogeny, use cladogram to show the cladistics relationship between organisms. Thus, depending on a given dataset, the resulting cladogram may differ. For example, a cladogram based purely on morphological traits may produce different results from one constructed using genetic data.