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A group of individual organisms that are all descended from a common ancestor is a clade. Is there a term for a group of individuals whose matrilineally descended ancestors (mothers, maternal grandmothers, maternal grandmothers' mothers, etc.) are all descended from a common ancestor?

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I'm not aware of any one-word term for this. The term "common mitochondrial ancestor" is often used to refer to a shared female ancestor of a genetically related group. If you want to specify female descendants only, perhaps you could say "females sharing a common mitochondrial ancestor". I think that's about the shortest way to say it.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for this. I'm not specifying only females at the end of the chains, but every link above every group member must be female until you get to a female who is a common ancestor. So "all individuals who share a mitochrondrial ancestor" does the job nicely. $\endgroup$
    – user40471
    Commented Feb 22, 2018 at 14:47
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I don't think there is a word for that.

However, you can refer to this specific DNA sequence as being exclusively maternally inherited (such as mtDNA for example; see also mtEve). For this sequence, the classical vocabulary from the field of phylogenetics and population genetics apply nicely.

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