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Phylogenetic systematics, or cladistics, is a scientific approach used in biology to classify and understand the evolutionary relationships among organisms. Its primary goal is to reconstruct the evolutionary history, or phylogeny, of species and groups of species.

The main principle of phylogenetic systematics is that organisms with more recent common ancestors are more closely related to each other than to organisms with more distant common ancestors. This approach is based on the idea that the history of life can be represented as a branching tree-like structure, known as a phylogenetic tree, where each branch represents a common ancestor and each terminal branch represents a species or group of species.