SYSTEMATICS BASED ON EVOLUTIONARY

GENERAL BIOLOGY 2 RELATIONSHIP

TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS

TAXONOMY VS. SYSTEMATICS
AND
BIOLOGY NOMENCLATURE AND SOME BASIC RULES
Learning Competency
The learner explain how the structural and developmental characteristics and relatedness of DNA sequences
are used in classifying living things.
(STEM_BIO11/12-IIIh-j-14)

Specific Learning Objectives

 Familiarize with different activities or practices (naming, describing, identifying, classifying) used in
taxonomy.
 Distinguish distinct characteristics of a taxa in relation to other groups.
 Describe species diversity and the procedure of the cladistics system that is used to establish
evolutionary histories.
 Explain how modern systematics uses DNA sequences data to answer the perplexing concepts of
speciation and evolution.

Taxonomy vs. Systematics

ROLE TAXONOMIST SYSTEMATIST

1.Provides scientific names  
2.Gives a detailed description of an organism  
3.Collects and keeps volumes of specimens  
4.Offers classifications for the organisms, constructing  
identification keys and data on their occurrence and
distribution.
5.Investigation on evolutionary histories. 

6.Considers environmental adaptation of species 

In a strict definition, systematics is the study of the diversification of life forms, both past and present, and their
relationships among other organism through time. Taxonomy, on the other hand, is the science of arranging
and classifying living organisms into groups called taxa. For us to have a better understanding of these two
terms, which are often confused and used interchangeably, we can summarize the roles of a taxonomist and a
systematist as follows

Biological Nomenclature and Some Basic Rules

It is always important that a name would be assigned to any organism and though some species can have
thousands of common names throughout the world, each has only a single scientific name. Thus, a formal
system of naming species of living things was created and which follows a complete organizational hierarchy,
from species through domain, as shown below for our own species, Homo sapiens. Each domain contains
related kingdoms and each kingdom consists of related phyla and so on Within each of these ranks, there may
be larger and smaller taxa such as subkingdom superphylum, subclass, subspecies, etc.

There are many ways to classify objects (e.g., color, size, shape, genetic sequence, etc.). The trick is to try to
determine which characteristics are the best to describe a particular species and to distinguish it from other
TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS AND BIOLOGY NOMENCLATURE AND SOME 1
BASIC RULES
 SYSTEMATICS BASED ON EVOLUTIONARY
GENERAL BIOLOGY 2 RELATIONSHIP

similar organisms. Whenever a new species is discovered a representative sample is collected and used as the
“type specimen" for that species; then it is described in detail and becomes part of à permanent museum
collection (Ziser, 2006). The scientific name of a species is a “binomial name" which includes two parts: the
genus and the species epithets.

In Summary, using humans as an example, the major taxonomic ranks are as follows (Krempels and Lee, 2003)

DOMAIN le.g. Eukarya)

KINGDOM (e.g, Animalia)

PHYLUM (e.g, Chordata)

CLASS (e. g., Mammalia)

ORDER (e.g., Primates)

FAMILY (e.g., Pongidae)

GENUS (e.g, Homo)

SPECIES (e.g., Homo sapiens)

Carl Linne, a Swedish botanist, created this system of nomenclature in 1735

as Systema naturae. He then changed his own name into latin as Carolus
Linnaeus. This is the name that is known as the father of modern taxonomy
(Figure 5.3)

The application of binomial nomenclature is now governed by various

internationally agreed codes of rules. With all naturalists worldwide adopting
this approach to thinking up names, several schools of thought were founded
that deals on the details for different groups. It became ever more apparent
that a detailed body of rules was necessary to govern scientific names. There
were several initiatives to arrive at worldwide-accepted sets of rules since
mid-eighteen centuries. At present, the following nomenclature codes govern
the naming of species, as follows:

 Algae, Fungi, and Plants - International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN),
 Animals- International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)
 Bacteria- International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria (ICNB)
 Cultivated plants- International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP)
 Viruses- International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)

Some of the major rules in nomenclature, as guided by ICBN and ICZN, are the following:

1. Names should be written in Latin.

2. The scientific name of an organism is always written with the genus capitalized and the species epithet
in lower case letters.
3. Because the words are Latinized, they should always be italicized.
4. When scientific names are written by hand, each separate word should be underlined.

TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS AND BIOLOGY NOMENCLATURE AND SOME 2

BASIC RULES
 SYSTEMATICS BASED ON EVOLUTIONARY
GENERAL BIOLOGY 2 RELATIONSHIP

5. The first name to be validly and effectively published gets the priority. This rule has caused numerous
name changes, particularly on fossil organisms.
6. All taxa must have an author when described. For example, Homo sapiens L, the L stands for Linneaus
who first successfully described and named the organism.

TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS AND BIOLOGY NOMENCLATURE AND SOME 3

BASIC RULES