Apomorphy and synapomorphy

In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to have evolved in their most recent common ancestor.

In cladistics, synapomorphy implies homology.

Examples of apomorphy are the presence of erect gait, fur, the evolution of three middle ear bones, and mammary glands in mammals but not in other vertebrate animals, such as amphibians or reptiles, which have retained their ancestral traits of a sprawling gait and lack of fur. Thus, these derived traits are also synapomorphies of mammals in general as they are not shared by other vertebrate animals.

Etymology

The word synapomorphy—coined by German entomologist Willi Hennig—is derived from the Ancient Greek words σύν (sún), meaning "with, together"; ἀπό (apó), meaning "away from"; and μορφή (morphḗ), meaning "shape, form".

Determining apomorphy

Whether a character state is derived or ancestral is called character polarity. Since genealogical classifications are based on synapomorphies, there must be a way to determine which character state is derived and which is ancestral (or what is special and what is general, to use less evolutionarily freighted terminology) without reference to genealogical classifications, to avoid a circular argument. Some features have been recognized as unique to particular taxa for thousands of years (e.g., feathers for birds, or an internal bony skeleton for vertebrates), and these sorts of common-sense presence/absence characters provide a scaffold upon which the polarity of other characters can be inferred: feathered animals form a natural group; things that lack feathers are just the complement - everything else (mammals, sharks, plants, bacteria). Once a taxon called "birds" is recognized that is defined by the synapomorphy "presence of feathers", then the polarity of other characters present at greater or lesser levels of inclusiveness can be discovered and evaluated.