- Phenetics should not be confused with phonetics, the study of speech sounds, despite the similarity in pronunciation.
In
biology,
phenetics , also known as
taximetrics, is an attempt to classify organisms based on overall similarity, usually in
morphology or other observable traits, regardless of their
phylogeny or evolutionary relation. It is closely related to
numerical taxonomy which is concerned with the use of numerical methods for taxonomic classification. Many people contributed to the development of phenetics, but the most influential were
Peter Sneath and
Robert R. Sokal. Their books are still primary references for this sub-discipline, although now somewhat dated and out of print.
