Taxonomy

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Taxonomy
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Taxonomy

• is the study of classification. It is a science
  of grouping organisms according to their presumed
  natural relationships. The problem with
  classification is that it is man-made. Many
  different schemes exist. For our purposes we will
  use 5 Kingdom system.

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Historical Background

• Aristotle was the first known individual to
  classify living things. He had two major
  groups... plants and animals. He further
  subdivided each of these groups. Plants were
  seperated based on there size (structure)...
  herbs, shrubs, and trees. Animals were grouped
  according to where they lived...land, sea, or
  air.
• Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) was a Swedish
  naturalist. He is considered the "Father of
  Taxonomy" because he developed the system by
  which we name organisms today. Sometimes
  referred to as Carl von Linne'

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Historical Background

• Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1707-1836) a French
  contemporary of Linneaus who established the
  major subdivisions of the plant kingdom.
• Georges Leoplod Cuvier (1769-1832) the Frenchman
  who established major "embranchments", now known
  as phyla, for the animal kingdom.
• Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) German who introduced
  the monera kingdom.
• Herbert F. Copeland (1902-1968) an American who
  reclassified all the microorganisms, championed
  the Kingdom protistica for all the nucleated
  microorganisms.
• Robert H. Whitaker (1924-1980) the American who
  founded the five kingdom system by elevating the
  fungi to kingdom statis.

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Why scientific names?

• Why do scientists use such big names for
  organisms? Part of the answer are the problems
  caused by common names? Many organisms have
  common names based on visible characteristics
  like color (bluebird) or where they live.

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Why scientific names?

• Another problem with common names is that an
  organism might have more than one common name.
  The buttonwood tree, plane tree and sycamore are
  all common names for Plantanus occidentalis.
• Consider the next question. What do the following
  animals, cougar, mountain lion, panther, and puma
  have in common?
• Answer Everything. These are all regional names
  used in the United States, for the same animal.

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Carl Linneaus

• He arranged organisms in groups based on common
  structural features. The last two groups, known
  as the genus and species were used to name the
  organism. The genus and species became known as
  the scientific name. None of the millions of
  species of organisms on the earth have the same
  scientific name. The system which uses "two
  names" is called binomial nomenclature

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Binomial Nomenclature

• A scientific name of an organim consists of a
  "last" name known as the genus and a "first" name
  called the species.
• This system is called binomial nomenclature, "two
  names" and was developed by the Swedish
  naturalist, Carl Linnaeus.
• The language generally used in classification is
  Latin but ancient Greek terms are also used.
  Latin is a classical language but, more
  importantly it is a dead language that is not
  subject to change.
• When writing a scientific name the first letter
  of the Genus name is always capitalized. The
  species name is entirely in lower case letters.

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Naming an organism

• The binomial name of a species is its scientific
  name. Scientific names are generally chosen to
  describe an organism, its range, or to honor a
  person. Species names are generally selected as
  adjectives to describe the organism

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Classification groups or taxa

• Listed in order the basic taxa are --- Kingdom,
  Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.
  
• One trick to learning the order of the taxa is to
  memorize the following sentence where the first
  letter in each word represents the first letter
  of the taxa.

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Example

• King
• Phillip
• Came
• Over
• For
• Grape
• Soda

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Classification Heirachy

• Kingdom - Animalia
• Phylum/Division - Chordata
• Class - Mammal
• Order - Primate
• Family - Homoidae
• Genus - Homo
• Species - sapeins

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Basis for classification

• All of the following have been used as a basis
  for classifying organisms.
• Morphorological similarities - a comparison of
  structures.
• Homologous structures
• Analogous structures
• Cellular organization - a comparison of cells and
  their organelles.
• Biochemical similarities -- a comparison of
  products made or use by an organism.
• Genetic similarities - a comparison of amino
  acids, proteins, and nucleic acids.
• Chromosome similarites - a comparison of the
  number of chromosomes and their shapes.
• Embryological similarites - a comparison of the
  amount of time before differentiation in embryos.
  

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