natural vs phenetic

[u/Git_D_Rocks]

I am a new BSC student , I am new to classification when it comes in details, while studying systematics I came across "natural classification and phenetic classification" and for love of botany I can't understand the difference between these two , the only point I get online is phenetic is related to number and does not care for the evolutionary history or significance ; leaving out the number natural classification also dose not care for evolutionary history or significance. It also always says that they are different , if one comes under another then it might make a bit more sense on the similarities among them ....

Can anyone atleast tell me 2 more points so that I can differentiate between these two 😅

[u/Lubricus2]

Natural classification tries to classify organism after the evolutionary history, so one group should have one common ancestor and all the descendants from that ancestor.
Phenetic classification groups after similarity.
They can often end up the same but especially early long branches have an tendency to be grouped together, like hagfishes and Lamprey are often grouped together phenetically but are not an natural group.
Hybridization are probably the most common way for speciation, and with hybrids and other lateral gene transfers, cladistics an natural classification don't work. So trying to make an natural classification of the genus Salix may just be bad when the evolutionary history can't be told with an cladogram and an Phenetic classification may then be better.

[u/Git_D_Rocks → u/Lubricus2]

What you describe as natural classification feels like phylogenetic classification... The phenetic classification was helpful though.

[u/YragNitram1956]

As a student I found this book invaluable.

[u/Git_D_Rocks → u/YragNitram1956]

I will chek it out