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Systematics Based on

Evolutionary Relationships
:

Taxonomy
Early Taxonomists
Linnaean System of Classification
Binomial Nomenclature
What is Taxonmy?
A branch of science that encompasses
the description, identification,
nomenclature, and classification of
organisms

The theory and practice of classifying


organisms
Definition of terms

Classification - method of grouping organisms; arranging entities into


some type of order to provide a system for cataloguing and expressing
relationships between these entities.

Identification - is the process of associating an unknown taxon with a


known one.

Description - is the assignment of features or attributes (characters) to


a taxon.
Nomenclature - the formal naming of taxa according to some
standardized system. Forolants, fungi, and algae, rules for naming are
provided by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. For
animals, rules on naming are based on the International Code of
Zoological Nomenclature.

Hierarchy - a system of organizing groups into ranks according to


stastus; putting groups of various levels according to importance or
power.
History Some Early Taxonomists
The history of taxonomy dates back to the origin of human language.
Western scientific taxonomy started in Greek some hundred years BC
and are here divided into prelinnaean and postlinnaean. The most
important works are cited and the progress of taxonomy (with the focus
on botanical taxonomy) are described up to the era of the Swedish
botanist Carl Linnaeus, who founded modern taxonomy. The development
after Linnaeus is characterized by a taxonomy that increasingly have
come to reflect the paradigm of evolution. The used characters have
extended from morphological to molecular. Nomenclatural rules have
developed strongly during the 19th and 20th century, and during the
last decade traditional nomenclature has been challenged by advocates
of the Phylocode.
Taxonomy is as old as the language skill of mankind. It has always been
essential to know the names of edible as well as poisonous plants in order
to communicate acquired experiences to other members of the family
and the tribe. Since my profession is that of a systematic botanist.

The Greeks and Romans:

Aristotle (384322 BC) :


In Western scientific taxonomy the Greek philosopher Aristotle was
the first to classify all living things, and some of his groups are still used
today, like the vertebrates and invertebrates, which he called animals
with blood and without blood. He further divided the animals with blood
into live-bearing and egg-bearing, and formed groups within the animals
without blood that we recognize today, such as insects, crustacea and
testacea (molluscs).
Theophrastus (370285 BC) :
was a student of Aristotle and Platon. He wrote a classification of all
known plants, De Historia Plantarum, which contained 480 species. His
classification was based on growth form, and we still recognise many of
his plant genera, like Narcissus, Crocus and Cornus. This is because Carl
Linnaeus accepted many of his generic names. De Historia Plantarum was
used for taxonomic purposes until the Middle Ages in Europe.

Dioscorides (4090 AD) :


was a greek physician, who travelled widely in the Roman and Greek
worldto gather knowledge about medicinal plants. Between 50-70 AD he
wrote De Materia Medica, whichcontained around 600 species. De
Materia Medica was used in medicine until the 16th century, andwas
copied several times. The classification in his work is based on the
medicinal properties of the species.
Plinius (2379 AD) :
was involved in the Roman army and later in the Roman state. He
wrote many books, but the only one that has survived is his Naturalis
Historia, a work of 160 voumes, in which he described several plants and
gave them Latin names. Many of these names we still recognize, like
Populus alba and Populus nigra, and since latin was later kept for botanical
science, we may call him the Father of Botanical Latin. Plinius died in
Pompeii.
Early Taxonomists :
Caesalpino (15191603) :
is sometimes called "the first taxonomist". In 1583 he wrote De
Plantis, a work that contained 1500 species. His classification was based
on growth habit together with fruit and seed form, as was that of
Theophrastos. Some groups that he recognized we still acknowledge, like
the plant families Brassicaceae and Asteraceae.
Andrea Cesalpino (15245-1603) :
Italian physician, philosopher, and botanist who sought a philosophical
and theoretical approach to plant classification based on unified and
coherent principles rather than on alphabetical sequence or medicinal
properties. He helped establish botany as an independent science. His De
plantis libri XVI (1583) is considered the first textbook of botany. The
brief first book presents the principles of botany using the models of
Aristotle and Theophrastus; the remaining 15 books describe and classify
more than 1,500 plants. While his classification system anticipated
Linnaeus system of binomial nomenclature, Cesalpino retained the false
classic divisions of woody and herbaceous plants and the belief that
plants are not sexual. He profoundly influenced later botanists such as
Linnaeus.
John Ray (1627-1705) :
his contribution to classification, which insisted on the taxonomic
importance of the distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons,
plants whose seeds germinate with one leaf and those with two,
respectively. Rays enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of
species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy. On the basis of the Methodus,
he constructed his masterwork, the Historia Plantarum, three huge
volumes that appeared between 1686 and 1704.

Augustus Quirinus Rivinus (1652-1723) :


Rivinus divided plants into eighteen classes, based on the regularity
and number of petals and also on the fruit as whether the fruit was bare
or surrounded by a dry or fleshy pericarp although only three of the
classes were published in his lifetime. His Introductio generalis in rem
herbariam Rivinius next work then examined flowers of five petals but
due to the expense of the plates he was unable to continue the series
and produce his volume of irregular six petaled flowers.
Post Linneaen era :

Georges-Louise Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (17071788) :


was a strong critic to Linnaeus work, and he found it wrong to impose
an artificial order on the disorderly natural world. His approach was to
describe the world rather than to classify it. His theories touched upon
development of species, infraspecific variety and acquired inherited
characters in species, which opened up a pathway for an evolutionary
theory.

Michel Adanson (17271806) :


wrote Familles des Plantes already in 1763. He launched the idea
that in classification one should not put greater emphasis on some
characters than on others, but use a great range of characters. He
critized Linnaeus' works, and considered Tournefort's classification far
superior.
Linneaen era :
Carl Linnaeus (17071778) :
are regarded as the starting points of modern botanical and
zoological taxonomy: the global flora Species Plantarum, published in
1753 and the tenth edition of Systema Naturae in 1758 including global
fauna. The reason for this is that Linnaeus introduced in these books a
binary form of species names called "trivial names" for both plants and
animals. For each species he created an epithet that could be used
together with the genus name. The trivial names were intended for
fieldwork and education, and not to replace the earlier phrase names.
The phrase names included a description of the species that
distinguished it from other known species in the genus.
Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (17481836) :
changed the system of plants with his Genera Plantarum in 1789, in
which he launched a natural system based on many characters that came
to be a foundation of modern classification. He divided the plants into
acotyledons, monocotyledons and dicotyledons and established the family
rank in between the ranks "genus" and "class".

Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (17441829) :


launched an evolutionary theory including inheritance of acquired
characters, named the "Lamarckism". This was foreboding the theory of
evolution presented by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in 1858
in London.
Classification
The practice of classification is almost everywhere such that, humans
tend to classify almost everything. For instance, one can describe the
clothes to wear, types of utensils used in the kitchen and even the type
of footwear. Classification becomes an essential part of everyday life
and the habit can be quite useful. In the past humans have classified
living organisms based on their general form and economic use. The type
of classification may not be that systematic as compared to the ones we
used today. However, it does not deny the fact that they were useful.

Emperor Shen Nung of China around 3000 BC hava classified plants


based on practical uses; for food, as herbal medicine, for shelters and
others.
Example:

Spoons, forks, ladles, pots, pans are classified as Kitchen Utensils


Skirts, blouses, socks, pants are classified as Clothing
Computer, TV, radio, amplifier are classified as Electronic devices
Corn beef, tuna, beef loaf, spam are classified as Canned goods
Cell phone, ipad, dslr are classified as Gadgets
Ballpen, whiteboard marker, pencil, highlighter are classified as
Writing Materials
K P C O F G S Linneaen Taxonomy
Domain Eukarya
KINGDOM Animalia Plantae

PHYLUM Chordata Arthropoda Magnoliophyta

CLASS Mammalia Insecta Lilopsida

ORDER Primates Canivora Diptera Liliales

FAMILY Hominidae Canidae Drosophilidae Liliaceae

GENUS Homo Canis Drosophila Allium

SPECIFIC EPIHET sapiens familiaris melanogaster cepa

SPECIES Homo sapiens Canis familiaris Drasophila Allium capa


melanogaster
COMMON NAME human dog fruit fly onion
Animalia Organisms that are able to move on their own
Plantae - includes theflowering plants,conifersand other gymnosperms,
ferns, clubmosses,hornworts,liverworts,mossesand thegreen algae, and
excludes theredandbrown algae.
Chordata Animals with backbone
Arthropoda - aninvertebrateanimalhaving anexoskeleton(externalskeleton),
asegmentedbody, and jointedappendages(paired appendages)
Magnoliophyta - the flowering plants (angiosperms)
Mammalia Chordates with fur or hair and milk glands
Primates Mammals with grasping fingers
Hominidae primates with relatively flat faces and three dimensional vision
Homo - hominids with upright position and large brain
Sapiens members of the genus homo with a high forehead and notably thin
skull bones
Binomial Nomenclature :

A system of nomenclature in which each species of animal or plant


receives a name of two terms of which the first identifies the genus to
which it belongs and the second the species itself.
The binomial aspect of this system means that each organism is given
two names, a generic name, which is called the genus (plural = genera)
and a specific name, the species. Together the generic and specific
name of an organism are its scientific name.
Having a universal system of binomial nomenclature allows scientists
to speak the same language when referring to living things, and avoids
the confusion of multiple common names that may differ based on region,
culture or native language.
What is Genus?
In biology, genus is the taxonomic classification lower than family
and higher than species. In other words, genus is a more general
taxonomic category than is species. For example, the generic name Ursus
represents brown bears, polar bears and black bears.

What is Species?
The species name, also called "specific epithet", is the second part of
a scientific name, and refers to one species within a genus.
A species is a group of organisms that typically have similar
anatomical characteristics and, in sexual reproducers, can successfully
interbreed to produce fertile offspring.
In the genus Ursus, there are a number of different bear species,
including Ursus arctos, the brown bear, Ursus americanus, the American
black bear and Ursus maritimus, the polar bear.
The most well-known living things have common names. For example, you are
probably familiar with the small, red insects dotted with little black spots. You
might call them 'ladybugs' or 'ladybird beetles.' But did you know there are
actually many different species of these insects? Just using common names may
make it difficult for scientists to differentiate between them, so every species
is given a unique scientific name.

Binomial nomenclatureis the formal naming system for living things that all
scientists use. It gives every species a two-part scientific name. For example, a
ladybug found in the United States goes by the fancy name of Harmonia axyridis.

The first part of a scientific name, likeHarmonia, is called the genus.


Agenusis typically the name for a small group of closely related organisms. The
second part of a scientific name,axyridisin this example, is thespecific epithet.
It is used to identify a particular species as separate from others belonging to
the same genus. Together, the genus plus the specific epithet is the full
scientific name for an organism.
THE END
Members :
Ruel B. Ramos Jr.
Janmel Elueverra
Marvin Dagasaan

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