Jacarea is a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

of caimans within the

subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end botanical subfamily names with "-oideae", and zo ...

Caimaninae. Jacarea was first named by Norell in 1988 to include the

extant Extant or Least-concern species, least concern is the opposite of the word extinct. It may refer to: * Extant hereditary titles * Extant literature, surviving literature, such as ''Beowulf'', the oldest extant manuscript written in English * Exta ...

species within the genera ''

Caiman A caiman ( (also spelled cayman) from Taíno language, Taíno ''kaiman'') is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family (biology), family, the other being alligators. ...

'' and ''

Melanosuchus ''Melanosuchus'', from Ancient Greek μέλας (''mélas''), meaning "black", and σούχος (''soúkhos''), meaning "crocodile", is a genus of caiman. The genus is most commonly referred to as the "Black Caimans". The black caiman of South Am ...

'', while excluding the dwarf caiman genus '' Paleosuchus''. In 1999, Brochu formally

cladistic Cladistics ( ; from Ancient Greek 'branch') is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is ...

ally defined Jacarea as the

last common ancestor A most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as a last common ancestor (LCA), is the most recent individual from which all organisms of a set are inferred to have descended. The most recent common ancestor of a higher taxon is generally assu ...

of ''Caiman latirosris'' ( Broad-snouted caiman), ''Caiman crocodilus'' ( Spectacled caiman), ''Caiman yacare'' ( Yacare caiman), ''Melanosuchus niger'' (

Black caiman The black caiman (''Melanosuchus niger'') is a crocodilian reptile endemic to South America. With a maximum length of around and a mass of over , it is the largest living species of the family Alligatoridae, and the third-largest crocodilian in ...

), and all its descendants. Molecular DNA

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

studies recover '' Paleosuchus'' as outside of Jacarea, although morphological studies are inconsistent. The

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

below shows the results of the strict consensus phylogenetic analysis of the 2020 Cicade ''et al.'' study:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q111663953 Caiman