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40 Terms used in Bionomenclature
bottom line punctuation: (cult. pl.) the use of accents and other diacritical
signs below letters of words (e.g. a cedilla); cfr top-line
punctuation..
BP: years before present (taken conventionally to be 1950).
brackets: parentheses; the typographic characters “( . . . )” (round brackets;
parentheses in the USA), “[ . . . ]” (square brackets; brackets in the
USA), or “{. . . }” (curly brackets) used to enclose words or
numbers so as to separate them from their context; see round
brackets, square brackets.
branch: (1) (zool., obsol.) a category between subkingdom and phylum. (2)
(phyl.) an edge or internode (connection between two nodes) on a
tree (graph theory); on a phylogenetic tree, commonly used to
represent a lineage, whether ancestral or terminal; sometimes also
used for an internode and all nodes and internodes distal (descended
from) it.
branch-based clade: (phyl.) a clade originating from a particular branch
(internode) on a phylogenetic tree and all nodes and branches
descended from that branch; a clade whose name is defined using a
branch-based definition (q.v.).
branch-based definition: (phyl.) a definition that associates a a name with
a clade originating with a branch (on a phylogenetic tree)
representing the ancestral lineage of specified organisms and/or
species (internal specifiers) after its divergence from the ancestral
lineage of other specified organisms and/or species (external
specifiers).
branch-modified node-based definition: (phyl.) a node-based definition
that incorporates wording from branch-based definitions to include
all extant organisms as internal specifiers without explicitly naming
them. Branch-modified node-based definitions can be used to
associate names with crown clades when basal relationships within
the crown are poorly understood or when the author intends to
include in the named taxon subsequently discovered extant
organisms that share a more recent common ancestor with the
currently known members of the named taxon than with other
currently known taxa.