 In  section 1.2.1,  we used the term “cladistics” to refer to a school of taxonomy which held that higher taxa must be monophyletic, and stood in contrast to the competing schools of phenetics/numerical taxonomy and evolutionary taxonomy. In this historical context, “cladistics” was sometimes used interchangeably with “phylogenetics”. We caution against that practice, especially when discussing more contemporary practices. Though it is hard to pin down a precise date when these terms began to carry different connotations, Felsenstein (1978) and Beatty (1982) are as good a marker as any for when these terms began to diverge and take on more nuanced senses. This is particularly true of the term “cladist”, which has become a highly disputed term, and one that has been claimed by sub-groups within the larger field of phylogenetics.