Classifying Life's Diversity
Importance
Safety
Research
Species can be toxic and identifying them can prevent accidents.
Identification of species and their properties can allow for further research regarding medicinal, evolutionary etc,.
Concepts
Biological Species Concept
It focuses on the ability and behaviour of individuals to mate and produce fertile offspring.
Advantage: Widely used by scientists
Disadvantage: Can't be applied to all cases. Ex. When animals are separated on a global scale, breeding between the species wouldn't occur in the wild.
Ex. When an animal reproduces by itself.
Morphological Species Concept
Focuses on the morphology (structure/form/appearance) of an organism
Advantage: Simplicity makes it widely used.
Disadvantage: How different is too different. Ex. Red Panda, Koala Bear, Panda Bear, not the same.
Ex. Offspring look much different then grown adult.
Phylogenetic Species Concept
Focuses on evolutionary relationships between organisms.
Advantage: Can be applied to extinct species.
Disadvantage: Don't know the evolutionary past of all species.
Uses DNA to draw connections between species
Taxonomy
The science of classifying and organizing organisms.
Binomial Nomenclature System
Scientific/Species name
Made of two parts
First part is the genus name, which identifies the group of closely related species
Second part is the species name
Genus name is capitalized, species name is italicized or underlined.
Hierarchical Classification
Linnaean System
Categories and levels are referred to as ranks. The classification at each level is called a taxon
Go from least similar to most similar.
There are 8 ranks. There are 3 domains, and 6 kingdoms.
In this order: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.
Tracing transmission of diseases.
Developing possible treatments for diseases.
Environmental conservation of organisms
Increasing crop yields and disease and pest resistance
Dichotomous Keys
Used to identify organisms
An identification tool with a series of two-part choices that lead to a correct identification.
Questions are about structural and anatomical analysis.