clade

A clade is a group of biological taxa, such as species, that includes all descendants of a single common ancestor. The term "taxon" (plural: taxa) refers to any unit used in the science of biological classification, or taxonomy. These taxa are organized hierarchically, with categories like kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.1234

The modern system of classifying organisms was developed by Carolus Linnaeus, who proposed a nested set system where organisms belong to increasingly general sets, or taxa, at higher levels. Phylogenetic trees are diagrams that visually represent the evolutionary history and relationships among organisms, stemming from a common ancestor. A monophyletic group, also known as a clade, includes an ancestor and all of its descendants.456