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Clade

In biological sciences, a clade is a group of organisms that share a common ancestor and is represented by that ancestor and all its descendants. That is, a branch in a population, species, kingdom or such. It was coined and used to explain evolutionary development of living organisms. Clades overlap with each other and can be put together into a phylogenetic tree or tree of life.

In genetic genealogy, we more often use the term subclade which simply means a subgroup or lower branch from a clade. Nodes or Branch points, if you recall, are termed haplogroups. Each edge or branch is termed a subclade. So a clade or all subclades of a haplogroup is simply the portion of the phylogenetic tree at and below that haplogroup branch point.

The closer you get to recent times in the human population, the closer clades become synonymous with words like clan and similar. A family branch and its genealogical tree in this project represents a clade taken from the haplogroup of the common ancestor. In biology, a cladogram and phylogenetic tree are pretty much synonymous. But cladograms have a slightly more general meaning in genetic genealogy.

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