CLASSIFICATION OF ORGANISMS: CONCEPT OF SPECIES AND BINOMIAL NOMENCLATURE, HABITS, AND HABITATS
Understand the principles and methods of classifying organisms in paleontology.
Classification of Organisms: Concept of Species and Binomial Nomenclature, Habits, and Habitats
- Sorting organisms into groups
- There is a way to put living things into different groups based on the traits they share and how they evolved. This is called classification.
- Scientists use this hierarchical method to figure out how different animals are connected. This is the main level of classification:
- Domain: The largest group of life forms, divided into three main domains: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya.
- Kingdom: Every domain is split up into kingdoms. Kingdoms like Animalia (animals), Plantae (plants), Fungi, and Protista are all in the Eukarya category.
- Phylum: Living things are grouped into phyla within countries. In the phylum Animalia, for example, there are groups like Chordata (animals with backbones) and Arthropoda (insects and spiders).
- Class: Phyla are broken down into classes. As an example, the groups Mammalia (mammals) and Aves (birds) are in Chordata.
- Each class is further broken down into orders. Orders like Carnivora (carnivores) and Primates (primates), for instance, are in the Mammalia class.
- Families: Orders are broken up into families. As an example, the groups Felidae (cats) and
- Canidae (dogs) are carnivora.
- Genus: Genera are the groups that make up families. Lions (Panthera leo) and tigers (Panthera tigris) are both in the genus Panthera.
- Species: The most detailed level, made up of separate creatures that can reproduce together. As an example, the species name for people is Homo sapiens.
- The idea of species
- A species is a group of animals that can breed with each other and have healthy babies.
Important parts are:
Interbreeding: Two members of the same species can mate and have babies that can have babies of their own.
Genetic Similarity: People of the same species share the same genes.
- Isolation during reproduction: One way to tell one species from another is if it can only breed within its own group and not with people from other groups.
Some ideas that can be used to describe species are
- The biological species concept is based on the ability to breed with other species and have healthy children.
- Morphological Species Concept: This way of naming species uses features and parts of the body to do so.
- The idea of an ecological species defines species by the parts and relationships they play in the environment.
- Phylogenetic Species Concept: Based on how species have evolved together and how they share a common ancestor.
- The Names of Binomials
- There is an official way to name species called binomial taxonomy.
Carl Linnaeus came up with it, and it includes:
Genus is the first capital letter of the name. It stands for a bigger group. In the case of Homo humans, Homo is the genus.
Species Name: The second part, which is put in caps. It names the exact species that belongs to the group.
- The species name for Homo sapiens is sapiens
- Habits and Places to Live
- Habits are the normal things that a body does and how it acts.
- For example, eating trends, social relationships, and reproductive behaviours are all examples of habits.
- Honeybees, for instance, like to collect juice from flowers and talk to each other by dancing.
- Habitats are the places where living things live and find the things they need to stay alive.
- An environment gives an animal what it needs, like food, water, a place to live, and room.
Some examples are
- Tropical rainforests have a lot of different kinds of plants and animals, as well as a lot of wetness.
- Coral reefs are places in the ocean that are famous for the variety of sea life and the buildings made of coral.
- It is very dry in deserts, and there isn't much greenery there.
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