Word.ws English Dictionary

autapomorphy

autapomorphy noun: a derived trait that is unique to a particular taxon.

Noun

autapomorphy (plural autapomorphies)

  1. A derived trait that is unique to a particular taxon
    • In their article, these authors gave a full description of the specimen and concluded that the species was not only lacking several characteristics typical for the genus Gonocephalus but presented additional characters that would justify the removal of G. mjobergi from Gonocephalus.They abstained...2023, Wolfgang Denzer, Hinrich Kaiser, “Naming And Gaming: The Illicit Taxonomic Practice Of 'Nomenclatural Harvesting' And How To Avoid It”, in Journal of Zoology, volume 320, number 3, page 164

Forms of autapomorphy

pluralautapomorphies

Origin of autapomorphy

From aut- + apomorphy.

Words formed from autapomorphy

Questions about autapomorphy

What does autapomorphy mean?
Autapomorphy means a derived trait that is unique to a particular taxon.
What part of speech is autapomorphy?
Autapomorphy is a noun.
What is the plural of autapomorphy?
The plural of autapomorphy is autapomorphies.

Words near autapomorphy in the dictionary

  1. autapomorphic
  2. autapomorphically
  3. autapomorphies
  4. autapomorphous
  5. autapomorphs
  6. autapomorphy
  7. autapotypic
  8. autapse
  9. autapses
  10. autaptic
  11. autaptically

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: autapomorphy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “autapomorphy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/autapomorphy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.