How to Use phylogeny in a Sentence

phylogeny

noun
Definition of phylogenynext
  • Tracking down and sequencing the DNA of all the samples at the heart of this phylogeny took the project’s 21 collaborators six years.
    — Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Dec. 2020
  • Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project has the goal of creating a full tree of life, or phylogeny, for the world’s birds.
    — Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, 21 Apr. 2018
  • This would tend to show that ontogeny follows phylogeny.
    — Seriously Science, Discover Magazine, 20 Nov. 2014
  • The dinosaur family tree, or phylogeny, as scientists call it, underpins the major questions about how these creatures came to rule the Earth millions of years ago.
    — Eva Botkin-Kowacki, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Nov. 2017
  • The researchers’ main goal was to create an accurate, detailed evolutionary tree, or phylogeny, for this large group of birds by sequencing the DNA of every single species in the group.
    — Alex Fox, Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Dec. 2020
  • Creating a complete phylogeny of birds is likely to resolve this dispute, or at least offer new evidence.
    — Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, 21 Apr. 2018
  • Researcher José María Gómez and colleagues took a novel approach to cutting through all the noise by turning to phylogeny, which charts how a species develops and then radiates out into different species.
    — Gemma Tarlach, Discover Magazine, 28 Sep. 2016
  • These phylogenies help researchers looking at the evolutionary histories of specific avian traits or the story of birds overall.
    — Elizabeth Pennisi, Science | AAAS, 16 Apr. 2018
  • To determine how these viral samples are related to each other, researchers use computer tools to construct the virus’s family tree, or phylogeny.
    — Marilyn J. Roossinck, The Conversation, 7 June 2021
  • The researchers resolved to reconstruct the phylogeny—or family tree of evolutionary relationships—of these groups from 56 million to 15 million years ago.
    — Max G. Levy, Wired, 2 Nov. 2021
  • Right now the new human population genomics is robust and informative in phylogeny.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 25 Mar. 2011
  • For living animals, building phylogenies can be a bit less controversial, because the animals’ genomes are available.
    — Eva Botkin-Kowacki, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Nov. 2017
  • Their scripts compared data from the animal experiments to the species’ phylogeny, a web describing their evolutionary relatedness.
    — Max G. Levy, Wired, 25 Jan. 2022
  • But aside from phylogeny, a closer study of Australian Aboriginal genetics may also give us insights into the impact which agriculture and higher population densities had upon our species' genomes.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 8 Aug. 2010
  • One crucial problem in phylogeny was convergent evolution.
    — Ben Crair, The New Yorker, 15 July 2022
  • As early as 1909, folklorists started comparing the evolution of stories and organisms, envisioning Linnaean taxonomies and evolutionary trees, or phylogenies, for myths and tales.
    — Ferris Jabr, Harper's magazine, 10 Mar. 2019
  • Darwin knew that paleontologists had only just begun to probe the fossil record, and so outlining phylogenies or tracing evolutionary lines of descent was a risky maneuver since those findings would almost certainly have to be revised.
    — Brian Switek, WIRED, 7 Jan. 2011
  • Overview of the history of discovery, taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of Majungasaurus crenatissimus from the late Cretaceous of Madagascar.
    — Fox News, 3 Dec. 2019
  • In the history of the bicycle, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
    — The New Yorker, 23 May 2022
  • To do this work, Professor Székely and his collaborators conducted a variety of statistical analyses on weaverbird diet, habitat type, distribution, and social behavior and compared these results to the weaverbird phylogeny (family tree).
    — Grrlscientist, Forbes, 26 Apr. 2022

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

Last Updated: