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what is meant by conservative characters in classification?

what is meant by conservative characters in classification?

Grade:12th pass

2 Answers

Keerthana Pragasam
35 Points
6 years ago
conservative,non adaptive,phyletic characters which are valuable for higher level classification. Exceeedingly similar forms are known as fossils going right back to the Pennsylvanian(upper carboniferous)deposits they funish a better text for a sermon on the persistence of conservatives,slow-evolving types than for one on the immense evolutionary potentialities of the generalised..
Arun
25750 Points
6 years ago
The concept of conservatism is basic tomuch of taxonomy. A conservative charac-ter is usually defined as one that haschanged more slowly than a non-conserva-tive one during phylogeny. The reliabilityof a character for placing organisms prop-erly in evolutionary schemes is also in-cluded in conservatism. It is argued quitevalidly that a character which changesslowly is the best kind of character for dis-cerning the evolutionary relationships oforganisms. This is true in practice becauseof the very incompleteness of the historicalrecord of phylogeny. When not all theforms of a line are known, there will begaps in the record of rapidly-changing char-acters. But slowly-changing ones may stillhave a fairly complete series represented,even if only a few forms are known. Thepatterns of evolutionary relationship areeasier to trace in characters that evolveslowly.

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