Relationship of Phylogeny to a "Natural" Classification

The network indicates the phylogeny (evolutionary history) of some terrestrial carnivorous mammals. The animals shown are part of a single evolutionary lineage that has been assigned the taxon (plural, taxa) name Carnivora at the category rank of Order. Carnivora includes several familes, including Felidae, Canidae & Mustelidae, each of which contains several genera (sing., genus). Each of these names labels a particular branch in the evolutionary tree. This system is said to be hierarchal because each level of category names (species, genus, family, order, etc.) is contained within a more inclusive cateogry. The system is also said to be "natural" because the hierarchy of names indicates the degree of evolutionary relationship among organisms. For example, organisms placed in the same genus are more closely related than those in different genera in the same family, and organisms in the same family are more closely related than those in different orders.