How to Use phylogenetic in a Sentence

phylogenetic

adjective
  • The team used the phylogenetic trees to estimate how long ago each branch of the tree split off from the others.
    Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 12 Apr. 2018
  • But non-primate species clustered on other branches of the phylogenetic tree did well too.
    Max G. Levy, Wired, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Microbiologists use this record, known as the phylogenetic tree, to determine how the virus has evolved.
    Peter Fimrite, SFChronicle.com, 18 May 2020
  • The findings, the release said, make important amendments to the early phylogenetic tree and the understanding of how life developed.
    Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY, 18 Aug. 2022
  • Plots showing the diversity of both the phylogenetic tree and tooth shapes show two distinct drops, around 34 million and 31 million years ago, reflecting these back-to-back disasters.
    Max G. Levy, Wired, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Ballesteros and others have been sequencing horseshoe crabs for some time, allowing for the creation of what's known as a phylogenetic dataset, a fancy way of saying a family tree.
    David Grossman, Popular Mechanics, 28 Feb. 2019
  • Habitat losses had led to entire branches of the tree of life being pruned away — meaning phylogenetic diversity took a major hit.
    Anna Funk, Discover Magazine, 18 Jan. 2019
  • Using these phylogenetic principles, some researchers have dated many common words as far back as 9000 years ago.
    Elizabeth Norton, WIRED, 7 May 2013
  • By comparing this genetic information to more recent samples, the team pieced together a phylogenetic tree that traces the history of the virus over the past few centuries.
    Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 9 Dec. 2016
  • These were then sequenced and analyzed in Naylor’s lab, and compared to create a phylogenetic tree, a genetic map of the walking shark genus, Hemiscyllium.
    National Geographic, 23 Jan. 2020
  • Using these little changes, researchers can draw up phylogenetic trees, much like family trees.
    Kai Kupferschmidt, Science | AAAS, 9 Mar. 2020
  • Since then scientists have not been able to determine with certainty whether Tully’s Monster had something like a backbone or where the creature fits on the phylogenetic family tree.
    Jack Tamisiea, Scientific American, 19 Apr. 2023
  • The researchers employed phylogenetic analysis to trace back the genetic history of the spiders and establish a rough family tree for them.
    Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 8 Mar. 2018
  • Through phylogenetic analysis — evaluating the evolutionary pathways of how new species take shape — the scientists could then determine how such changes might be linked to increases in body size.
    Mindy Weisberger, CNN, 11 May 2023
  • Further analysis of its morphological and phylogenetic features revealed that the insect likely lived underground and was a close ancestor of a type of modern army ant from Africa and Asia, known as the Dorylus.
    Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 29 Nov. 2022
  • By comparing slight differences in the number and height of spectral peaks, a computer could correctly slot eggshell samples from more than a dozen dinosaurs, including early birds, onto a phylogenetic tree.
    Gretchen Vogel, Science | AAAS, 8 Oct. 2019
  • To determine the relation, UAB said researchers performed a phylogenetic analysis to compare the features of different turtle species to see how closely, or distantly, related the species could be.
    Ivana Hrynkiw | Ihrynkiw@al.com, al, 7 Jan. 2020
  • Collins points out that medievalists studying copying errors in manuscripts have long used the same phylogenetic programs that evolutionary biologists use to study how DNA mutations appear over time.
    Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 8 Aug. 2017
  • The scientists sank their teeth into some math modeling and phylogenetic bracketing.
    Daisy Hernandez, Popular Mechanics, 8 Sep. 2020
  • Dr Barrios and her collaborators used these data to construct a phylogenetic tree, or a family genetics tree.
    Grrlscientist, Forbes, 30 Apr. 2022
  • Steppe by steppe That branching seems to have been part of a Y. pestis population explosion around 4,000 years ago, which is when phylogenetic analysis of ancient bacterial genomes suggests that plague strains diversified rapidly.
    Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 12 June 2018
  • The team combined the new fossil evidence with previously collected genetic data from living birds to update the phylogenetic tree of bird evolution.
    Carolyn Gramling, Science | AAAS, 10 July 2017
  • But, Neanderthals are far closer to modern humans, as would be likely expected from the phylogenetic relationship.
    Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 6 Nov. 2011
  • But the researchers’ multiple lines of morphological and phylogenetic evidence offer strong support for their claims, according to Dr. Mah.
    New York Times, 16 June 2021
  • But horizontal gene transfer is most frequent among microbes—especially our newfound friends, archaea—and HGT appears to generate a large share of the phylogenetic interconnections that make life such a tangled tree.
    David P. Barash, WSJ, 9 Aug. 2018
  • The team’s phylogenetic analysis, which indicates evolutionary relationships, placed the species within the vampyropod side of the evolutionary tree, Whalen said.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 8 Mar. 2022
  • And according to a phylogenetic tree mapping the evolutionary relationship between the genomes, one of the nine major genotypes circulating today was the product of an ancient recombination between two strains of the hepatitis B virus.
    Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 11 May 2018
  • Any phylogenetic tree is a hypothesis, subject to testing and change with additional analysis and discovery.
    Brian Switek, Scientific American Blog Network, 15 May 2017
  • According to Simonin and Roddy, phylogenetic evidence shows that changes in genome size and the relevant physiological traits occurred together.
    Quanta Magazine, 16 June 2019
  • During an emerging outbreak when pathogens have not yet diverged into different strains, phylogenetic information is too weak to hypothesize transmission linkage...
    Beth Mole, Ars Technica, 28 May 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'phylogenetic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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