A branching diagram that shows the evolutionary relationships between species based on shared derived characteristics, without indicating time scales or amounts of evolutionary change.
From Greek 'klados' meaning 'branch' and 'gramma' meaning 'drawing or record'. The term was coined in the 1960s by German entomologist Willi Hennig as part of his development of cladistic analysis, a method for determining evolutionary relationships.
A cladogram is like a phylogenetic tree's minimalist cousin - it only shows who's related to whom based on shared innovations, not when they split or how much they've changed! It's pure relationship mapping, like showing that birds and crocodiles are sister groups without worrying about when dinosaurs evolved.
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