5.3 CLASSIFICATION OF BIODIVERSITY

Binomial System: When a species is discovered given scientific name

Binomial system is universal to avoid confusion

Homo sapiens

Genus

Species

Must be underlined if written by hand

• Carl Linnaeus assigned binomials to all known species in 1758
• The IBC and ICZ agreed to accept this naming convention in 1905
• Congresses meet periodically to dicuss any issues affecting classification

• Different taxa are used to group and classify organisms

• Each taxon includes the taxa from the level below

• Going up taxa has large number of species sharing fewer features

• Eukaryota
• Bacteria
• Archea

Not all domains use the same taxon 

Eukaryotes use:

Domain                                                Does 

Kingdom                                              Keith

Phylum                                                 Play

Class                                                    Classical

Order                                                    Or

Family                                                   Family

Genus                                                   Guitar

Species                                                Songs

• Animalia

• Plantae

• Fungi

• Protista          

Members of a group share homologous traits that are inherited from common ancestors

Artificial classification: Grouping birds, bats and insects together because of their ability to fly as they do not share a common ancestor

Natural Classification is not straightforward because:

• Convergent Evolution - Make distinctly related organisms appear similar

• Adaptive Radiation - Make similar organisms appear very different from each other

ADVANTAGES:

- Identification of a species is easier dichotomus keys can be used to help this process

- All members of a group inherit similar characteristics this allows for characteristics to be predicted. If a new species was discovered predictions could be made about it

Members of a group that do not share a common ancestor are split into more taxa

If species are found to share a common ancestor the taxa is reunited

• Used to identify species
• Consists of a numbered series of pairs of descriptions
• Each pair of descriptions leads to either another pair of descriptions or an identification
• Features chosen to use in descriptions should be reliable and identifable