noun
- a biologist who practices or advocates cladistics, a method of classifying organisms based on evolutionary relationships and shared derived characteristics.
Usage: technical; biology
Examples
- The cladist argued that the new fossil evidence supported a different evolutionary tree.
- As a cladist, she focused on identifying shared characteristics that indicated common ancestry.
- Cladists use phylogenetic analysis to determine the relationships between species.
- The conference brought together cladists from universities around the world to discuss modern classification methods.