LECTURE 1

CLASSIFICATION OF LIVING THINGS

 Lesson Outcome

■ State the concepts of classification of living

things like the binomial system of
nomenclature.
■ Describe and explain the characteristics, unique
life history and common features of each major
group of living things.
■ Relate and discuss the evolutionary relationship
between organisms.
 Content

a) Terminology: Biodiversity, Systematics,

Taxonomy, Classification
b) Binomial System of Nomenclature
c) Hierarchy of Classification
d) Classification of Organisms - 2-kingdom
classification, 3-kingdom classification, 5-
kingdom classification & 6-kingdom
classification (include the evolution of these
classifications)
■
 Introduction

■ Systematic: Scientific study of the diversity of

organisms and their evolutionary relationship.
■ Biodiversity: Variety of living organisms and the
ecosystem they form.
■ Taxonomy: Branch of systematics devoted to
naming, describing and classifying organisms.
■ Classification: The process of assigning
organisms into groups based on their similarities
and relationship.
■ Taxa: Formal grouping of organisms at any
given level.
 Why do Scientists Classify?
❑ Almost 2 million kinds of organisms on Earth
❑ Need to keep organized! (Easier to study!)
❑ Useful because : once classified, scientists
will know a lot about an organism

What is classification?

⚫ Classification is the grouping of things according to

characteristics
⚫ The science of classifying organisms is known as
taxonomy
What is taxonomy?
■ Taxonomy is the branch of biology that
deals with identification, naming and
classifying of living things according to
characteristics.
■ Taxon: the named taxonomy unit at any
given level of classification
■ Biologists who study this are called
taxonomists.
■ Carl Linnaeus!
Hierarchical Classification

■ It starts very broad and gets more specific

■ 7 hierarchies in our system:
■ Kingdom Very broad
■ Phylum (Division)
■ Class
■ Order
■ Family
■ Genus
■ Species Very specific
Let’s classify. . .
■ Here is the classification for a Lion
■ Kingdom: Animalia (animal kingdom)
■ Phylum: Chordata (Vertebrates)
■ Class: Mammalia (mammals)
■ Order: Carnivora (carnivores)
■ Family: Felidae (cats)
■ Genus: Panthera
■ Species: Panthera leo
Linnaeus
■ Carolus Linnaeus (1750s)
-used observations as basis of his system
-placed organisms based on observable
features
■ He used latin to describe species, which is what
we still use today (that is why we italicize
scientific names!)
■ Devised naming system for organisms:
Scientific name based on Binomial
Nomenclature – so that scientist speaking and
writing different languages could communicate
clearly.
Binomial system
⚫ Binomial nomenclature use binomial system in
naming organisms
⚫ 2 part naming system
⚫ uses Latin words
⚫ Genus species : Felis concolor
⚫ The first part of the name designates the genus, and
the addition of the second part the specific epithet,
designates the species
⚫ The specific epithet is usually a word that describes
some particular quality of the organism.
⚫ Genus is capitalized; species is NOT.
⚫ If you can’t italicize, underline the genus and
species!
An animal is known by two names…

■ Canis lupus is the scientific/species name

for a gray wolf.
■ Canis is the genus name
■ lupus is the epithet name
Genus…

■ A genus consists of a group of closely

related species
■ Other animals in the Canis group
include dogs and coyotes
■ The genus name is always
Capitalized
Species...
■ A species consists of animals that
can mate and produce fertile offspring
■ Only grey wolves are known as Canis
lupus.
■ The species name is always
lowercase
■ Both names must be underlined or
italicized.
Classification Today
Species with similar evolutionary histories
are classified more closely together.

-when organisms share a common

ancestor, they share an evolutionary
history
Next…
 Classification in Kingdoms

■ From the time Aristotle to mid-19th century,

organisms are divided into 2 kingdoms: Plantae
and Animalia.
■ 1866 – Ernst Heckel proposed Protista.
■ 1937 – Edouard Chatton suggested dichotomy
of Eukaryote and Prokaryote.
■ 1969 – R.H. Whittaker proposed a five-kingdom
classification. Fungi and Monera added.
■ Late 1970s – Carl Woose proposed that bacteria
could be divided to Archaebacteria and
Eubacteria.
■ Six Kingdoms: Eubacteria, Archaebacteria,
Protista, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia.
Classification system
1. Two kingdom system
■ Linnaeus proposed two kingdom system
model.
■ plant (kingdom Plantae) or animal
(kingdom Animalia).
■ As additional species were discovered, the
two-kingdom system gave way to other
models.
2. Five kingdom system
■ In 1969, Robert Whittaker
■ proposed a Five-Kingdom System
■ based mainly on cell structure
(unicellular/multicellular)
■ the ways that organism obtain
nutrition from their environment.
Monera
■ Accommodate the bacteria
■ Prokaryotic
■ unicellular
■ absorb or photosynthesize
■ motile or non-motile
■ asexual
■ E.g - Blue-green algae, bacteria.
Protista
■ Protista are diverse groups of
microorganisms
■ Eukaryotic
■ mostly unicellular
■ absorb, ingest or photosynthesize
■ sexual and asexual
■ E.g - Protozoa, red algae, brown
algae, slime mold
Plantae
■ Eukaryotes with cellulose cell walls
■ photosynthesize (autotrophs)
■ Multicellular
■ non-motile
■ sexual and asexual
■ E.g - mosses, ferns, grasses, shrubs,
trees
Fungi
■ Not a part of plant kingdom because
they are nonphotosynthetic
■ Eukaryotic
■ absorb nutrients (heterotrophs)
■ Multicellular
■ non-motile
■ sexual and asexual
■ E.g - Mushrooms, lichens, molds.
Animalia
■ Eukaryotic
■ Multicellular
■ Ingest
■ Motile
■ sexual.
■ Whittaker’s
five-kingdoms
classification
Linnaeus vs. Today
■ Phylogeny=Evolutionary history, or how the
plants are related.
■ We use genetics to figure out how plants are
related.
■ In Linnaeus’s day, scientists did not know what
evolution was or what DNA and genetics was.
■ This is how science works!
3. The 6 Kingdoms
■ Kingdoms are the largest division-all
organisms are in one of the 6
kingdoms
■ Animals
■ Plants
■ Fungi
■ Protists
■ Eubacteria / bacteria
■ Archaebacteria / archaea
Six kingdom system
Bacteria:
⚫ Consist of bacteria,
⚫ prokaryotes (lack distinct nuclei and
other membranous organelles)
⚫ Unicellular
⚫ microscopic,
⚫ cell walls generally composed of
peptidoglycan
⚫ Eg: nitrogen-fixing bacteria, lactic acid
bacteria and cyanobacteria.
cont.
Archaea
⚫ divided into group depending on the
environment they live in:
❖ extreme halophiles (inhabit salty
environments),
❖ extreme thermopiles (inhabit hot,
sometimes acidic environments)
❖ extreme methanogens (inhabit sewage,
swamps and animal digestive tracts)
⚫ Prokaryotic cells, unicellular and microscopic
⚫ peptidoclycan absent in cell walls
⚫ differ in biochemically from bacteria.
4. The 3 Domain System
Three-Domain System (by Carl Woese)

⚫ Prokaryotes and eukaryotes

⚫ There are two groups of prokaryotes – archaea and
bacteria.
⚫ Given through molecular evidence, most biologists
now divide the prokaryotes into kingdom Bacteria and
kingdom Archaea.
⚫ Systematists now classify organisms into three
domains: Archaea (which corresponds to kingdom
Archaea), Bacteria (which corresponds to kingdom
Bacteria) and Eukarya (eukaryotes).
⚫ The Archaea domain is apparently closely related to
the domain Eukarya than they are to domain Bacteria
 Domain
Characteristics
Bacteria Archaea Eukarya
Nuclear envelope Absent Absent Present

Membrane-enclosed organelles Absent Absent Present

Peptidoglycan in cell wall Present Absent Absent

Unbranched Some branched Unbranched

Membrane lipids
hydrocarbon hydrocarbons hydrocarbon
s s
RNA polymerase One kind Several kinds Several kinds

Initiator amino acid for protein Formyl-

Methionine Methionine
synthesis methionine
Intron (noncoding parts of Present in some Present
Rare
gene) genes
Response to the antibiotics
streptomycin & Absent Present Present
chloramphenicol
Histones associated with DNA Absent Present Present

Circular chromosome Present Present Absent

Abililty to grow at temperature
No Some species No
Next….
 Systematics and phylogeny leads to classification

■ Systematics: The analytical study of the diversity

and relationships of organisms.
■ Phylogeny: The evolutionary history of a species or
group of related species.
■ Part of the scope of systematics is the development
of phylogeny, the evolutionary history of a species
or group of related species.
■ To trace phylogeny or the evolutionary history of
life, biologists use evidence from paleontology,
molecular data, comparative anatomy (homology
and analogy), and other approaches.
Fossil record

■ Fossils are the preserved remnants or

impressions left by organisms that lived in
the past.
■ In essence, they are the historical
documents of biology.
■ The fossil record is the ordered array in
which fossils appear within sedimentary
rocks.
 Paleontology is the branch of science
concerned with fossil animals and plants.

(c) Leaf fossil, about 40 million

years old

(b) Petrified tree in

Arizona, about 190 million
(a) Dinosaur bones being excavated years old
from sandstone (d) Casts of ammonites,
about 375 million
years old
(f) Insects
preserved
whole in
amber

(e) Boy standing in a 150-million-year-old

(g) Tusks of a 23,000-year-old dinosaur track in Colorado
mammoth, frozen whole in Siberian ice
 Homology

■ Such features that are derived from the

same structure in a common ancestor
are termed homologous features
■ For example, consider the limb bones of
mammals. A human arm, a cat forelimb, a
whale front flipper and a bat wing,
although quite different in appearance,
have strikingly similar arrangements of
bones, muscles and nerves.
Examples of homologous
organs in (a) Plants and
(b) Animals
 Analogy
■ Not all species with similar features have
descended from a recent common ancestor,
however.
■ Such independent evolution of similar structures in
distantly related organisms is known as
convergent evolution.
■ Convergent evolution occurs when similar
environmental pressures and natural selection
produce similar (analogous) adaptations in
organisms from different evolutionary lineages
■ Organs or other structures that are
not homologous but simply have
similar functions in different
organisms are termed homoplasies
features.
 Molecular biology
■ Evaluating homologies by comparing DNA
sequences.
■ Generally, the more closely species are thought to
be related on the basis of other evidence, the
greater is the percentage of nucleotide sequences
that their DNA molecules have in common.
■ For example, by using the DNA sequence data, we
can conclude the closest living relative of human is
the chimpanzee (because its DNA has the lowest
percentage of differences in the sequence
examined).
DNA Sequence
 Reconstructing phylogeny

■ A phylogeny, or evolutionary tree, represents the

evolutionary relationships among a set of
organisms or groups of organisms. The tips of
the tree represent groups of descendent taxa
and the nodes on the tree represent the
common ancestors of those descendents.
■ Two descendents that split from the same node
are called sister groups.
■ Many phylogenies also include an outgroup — a
taxon outside the group of interest.
Wolf is outgroup to Leopard and domestic cat are
leopard and domestic sister group
cat

Wolf Leopard Domestic cat

Common ancestor Common ancestor

of leopard and
domestic cat
Next…
Linking classification & phylogenies

■ Systematists have developed a number of

different approaches for trying to show the
relationships of organisms.
■ The main approaches in the last 50 or
so years may be classified as follows:
■ 1. Cladistic (or phylogenetic)
■ 2. Phenetic (or numerical taxonomy)
■ 2. Traditional
 1. Cladistic approach or
Phylogenetic systematics

■ A cladogram - is a depiction of patterns of

shared characteristics among taxa
■ A clade within a cladogram - is defined as
a group of species that includes an
ancestral species and all its descendants
■ Cladistics - is the study of resemblances
among clades also known as phylogenetic
systematic which used to infer
evolutionary relationship.
Fi g re 26.10
u

A A

B B

C C

D D

F
 Grouping 1

D E G H J K

C F I
Monophyletic
clade
B

A valid clade is a monophyletic. A

monophyletic clade is made up of an
ancestral species and all of its
descendants
 Grouping 2

D E G H J K

C F I

Paraphyletic clade
B

Paraphyletic clade consists on an ancestor

and some, but not all, of that ancestor’s
descendants.
D E G H J K

C F I

Grouping 3 Polyphyletic clade

B

Polyphyletic clade consists of numerous

types of organisms that lack a common
ancestor.
 Shared primitive and shared derived
characters
■ In cladistic analysis, systematists make a distinction
between shared derived characters (apomorphic) and
shared ancestral / primitive characters
(plesiomorphic) when they evaluate the importance of
homologies for determining placement of organisms
within the Linnaean classification system.
■ A shared derived character is unique to a particular
clade.
■ A shared primitive character is found not only in the
clade being analyzed, but older clades too.
■ Shared derived characters are useful in establishing a
phylogeny, but shared primitive characters are not.
 Continue..
■ Example of derived traits is the foot of a modern horse. Its
distant early mammal ancestor had five digits. The bones
of these digits have been largely fused together in horses
giving them essentially only one with a hoof.
contrast,
toe primates have retained In the
characteristic of having five digits on theprimitive
ends of their
hands and feet.
■ For example, the presence of hair is a good character to
distinguish the clade of mammals from other tetrapods.
■ It is a shared derived character that uniquely identifies
mammals.
■ However, the presence of a backbone is a shared
primitive character because if evolved in the ancestor
common to all vertebrates.
Fi g re 26.11
u

1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1
s
1 1 1

1 1

mnion
1
Hai
Fi g re 26.11a
u

1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1

1
Fi g re 26.11b
u
 Outgroup

■ A key step in cladistic analysis is outgroup comparison

which is used to differentiate shared primitive characters
from shared derived ones.
■ The outgroup refers to the taxa that is known to have
relationship to the ingroup but it is not the member of
ingroup.
■ For example, the turtle which is a reptiles is outgroup and
the mammal is collectively ingroup are all linked to each
other because they are vertebrates. Thus, vertebral column
or backbone is a shared primitive character while hair and
mammary glands are derived characters that differentiate
reptiles from mammals. Traits those evolved relatively
recently and so are not present in the ancestral species
being considered is called a derived trait or derived
 2. Phenetic approach
■ Phenetic or numerical systematics is a numerical taxonomy
based on similarities of many characters.
■ Organisms are classified according to the number of
characters or anatomical characteristics they share without
trying to determine whether their similarities are homologus
or analogous.
■ Phenetic taxonomy is done by counting up differences in
features between organisms and working out a classification
from those counts, with the species having the fewest
differences being the closest.
■ Phenetic classifications simply disregard the possibility that
some of the shared characters are probably the result of
convergence.
 3. Traditional systematic
■ Traditional systematics is sometimes referred to
as “Linnaean classification”.
■ A system based on a hierarchy of formal ranks
(e.g., family, genus, etc.) and binomial
nomenclature (two-part scientific names
consisting of a genus name and specific
epithet).
■ These systematics mostly anatomical
data to classify utilize and build
phylogenetic trees organisms evolutionary
principles. based on
■ Data used in traditional systematics
stresses both common ancestry
(monophyletic group) and the amount of
divergence among groups. The traditional,
according to Linnaeus view, is that birds
have feathers, reptiles have scales, and
mammals have hair. Using this as a major
character, a classification like that above
has been constructed. Fossils, evidence of
past life, are not included in this
classification.
Traditional systematics classification of reptiles,
birds and mammals
Thank
you
EXTRA NOTES
Systematic in Reconstructing Phylogeny

■ Phylogeny – production of phyla; determination

of evolutionary relationship.
■ Help to understand evolutionary patterns and
predicting characteristics of newly discovered
species.
■ To group species into higher taxa – scientists
usually evaluate on similarities.
■ Homology: evolution from common ancestor.
■ Homoplasy: superficially similar characters that
are not homologous because they evolved
Vertebrate limbs are homologous.
Are bird and bat WINGS
homologous?

No, they are homoplasious.

■ Plesiomorphic characters (shared ancestral
characters): traits that were present in an
ancestral species and remain present in all the
groups that descendants from that ancestor.

■ Synapomorphic characters (shared derived

characters): traits found in two or more taxa that
first appeared in their most recent common
ancestor.

■ Usually, organisms are classified on the basis of

combination of traits rather than single traits.
■ Molecular systematics – provides methods for
comparing macromolecules for assessing
■ Three kinds of taxonomic groupings:

■ Monophyletic group: includes all of the

descendants of the most recent common
ancestor.

■ Paraphyletic group: consists of a common

ancestor and some, but not all, of its
descendants.

■ Polyphyletic group: evolved from different

ancestors.
 How Data are Analyzed and Interpreted

■ Three approaches to systematics are:

■ Phenetics (numerical taxonomy): based on
similarities of many characters.
■ Evolutionary systematics: considers both
evolutionary branching and the extent of
divergence
■ Cladistics (phylogenetic systematics): insists
that taxa be monophyletic. Each clade consists
of a common ancestor and all its descendants.
■ Cladists use outgroup analysis to determine
ancestral and derived.
■ Outgroup: taxon that represents the ancestral
condition because it diverged earlier than any
other taxa.
■ Use the principle of parsimony: choose simplest
explanation to interpret data.
■ Cladogram indicates which taxa shared a
common ancestor and how recently they shared
that ancestor
■ Parsimony and the analogy–
versus–homology pitfall.

■ If we interpret the four–

chambered hearts of birds and
mammals as homologous instead
of analogous and use no other
information, the tree in (a)
appears to be the more
parsimonious tree. In fact,
abundant evidence supports the
hypothesis that birds and lizards
are more closely related than
birds and mammals are and that
four–chambered hearts evolved
more than once, supporting the
tree in (b).
Trees with different likelihoods.
■ Based on percentage
differences between genes
carried by a human, a
mushroom, and a tulip (a), we
can construct two possible
phylograms with the same total
branch length (b).
■ The sum of the percentages
from a point of divergence in a
tree equals the percentage
differences as listed in (a).
■ For example, in tree 1, the
human–tulip divergence is 15%
+ 5% + 20% = 40%. In tree 2,
this divergence also equals 40%
(15% + 25%).
■ Assuming that the genes have
evolved at the same rate in the
different branches, tree 1 is
more likely than tree 2.