What is a phylogeny?

A phylogeny, also known as a tree, is an explanation of how sequences evolved, their genealogical relationships, and therefore how they came to be the way they are today.

One the first sketches of a phylogenetic tree was made by Charles Darwin (Figure 3). This famous diagram is one of his earlier sketches from a series of notes that he used to develop the idea.

Figure 3 Sketch by Charles Darwin using the metaphor of a tree to represent evolutionary relationships.