Definition of "cladogenesis" []

• The evolutionary change and diversification resulting from the branching off of new taxa from common ancestral lineages. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Usually, this pattern is attributed to cladogenesis compressed in time, combined with the inevitable erosion of the phylogenetic signal."
• "At the early stages of cladogenesis, it can be almost impossible to determine if a particular lineage represents an new species."
• "The answer is that “species” is a term that applies when cladogenesis occurs which we may or may not be able to identify, no matter what the “level of organisation” or whatever."