Chapter 10, Problem 1SA

Name and describe the three areas of taxonomy.

Summary Introduction

To review:

The three areas of taxonomy.

Introduction:

A group of organisms with the same properties (that is shared characteristics features and morphology) are grouped together to separate them from the ones which carry different properties. The sorting of living organisms in different groups is taxonomy and a particular group of an organism is known as a taxon (plural for which is taxa).

Therefore, taxonomy (the word taxonomy means arrangement) is the science of naming, defining and characterizingbiological organisms into hierarchical groups (taxa) based on their shared characteristics.

Explanation of Solution

In order to simplify the understanding of taxonomy, one can say that living organisms sharing same characteristics are grouped together, these groups are called taxa. Moreover, these taxa (groups) are provided with a particular rank which is called taxonomic rank. These groups of particular rank can be combined to form a higher rank, which in turn generates a taxonomic hierarchy.Therefore, one can say that taxonomy revolves around three inter-related areas of study, which is described as under-

Identification: The process of identification involves looking for basic characteristics of an organism in order to recognize it.

Classification: Once an organism is identified, the next step is to find the characters it shares with other groups and place this organism under its related group. This process of arrangement of an organism into their related group for ease of study is called classification.

Nomenclature:It can simply be defined as the naming of the organism. As a specific scientific name is assigned to an organism and that name is accepted universally, it gets easier to refer to that organism anywhere across the globe, without linguistic barriers. The scientific community follows a binomial nomenclature, in which there are two parts of the name which is written in italics. The first partof the name indicates the genus of the species, while the second part depicts the species within the genus.

Conclusion

There are several organisms present on this Earth, studying them becomes essential for an individual in order to know their properties. Such vast number of organisms need to be named for making the study easier, also there should be one common or universal name of an organism across the globe so that anyone can identify it without a linguistic barrier. For this purpose, the study of taxonomy was introduced which can be divided into three inter-related areas namely- identification, classification,and nomenclature.