A.

Some Basic Principles of Classification

Classification
- Ordering of organisms into groups based on resemblances or common descent

Domain Specific - General

Species

Classification schemes
Purpose:
○ Shows the degree of relatedness among organizations
○ To facilitate identification of species

Historical Background
1. Aristotle
○ 384-322 BC
○ Father of Logic
○ First great classifier
○ 2 groups of animals
With blood
Without blood

2. Theophrastus
○ 371-286 BC
○ Student of Aristotle
○ Classified plants
Trees (tall growing plants with trunks and branches)

Shrubs (smaller than trees without trunks but have branches)

Herbs (not woody)

3. Middle Ages
○ Polynomial system - system of naming organisms with many names

4. John Ray
○ "species" - basic unit of classification
○ Differentiated monocots from dicots
○ "Historia Plantarum"

5. Carolus Linnaeus
○ 1707-1778
○ Binomial nomenclature system of classification
○ Books: Systema Naturae (1758)
Genera Plantarum (1737)
Species Plantarum (1737)

6. Georges Cuvier
○ 1769-1832
○ Classified animals based on body plans
Vertebra
Articulata
Radiata
Mollusca

Kingdom Schemes

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Kingdom Schemes
1. 2-Kingdom Schemes : ARISTOTLE
○ Plantae
○ Animalia
2. 3-Kingdom Schemes : ERNST HAECKEL (1866)
○ Plantae
○ Animalia
○ Protista
-Monera
3. 4-Kingdom Schemes : HERBERT COPELAND (1938)
○ Plantae
○ Animalia
○ Protista
○ Monera
4. 5-Kingdom Schemes : ROBERT H. WHITTAKER (1950's)
○ Plantae
○ Animalia
○ Protista
○ Monera
○ Fungi
5. 6-Kingdom Schemes : CARL WOESE
○ Plantae
○ Animalia Eukarya
○ Fungi
○ Protista Most primitive type of Monerans

○ Archaebacteria - Archae DNA different in cellular level

○ Eubacteria - Bacteria
6. 8-Kingdom Schemes
○ Domain: Archaea
□ Kingdom: Archaebacteria
○ Domain: Bacteria
□ Kingdom: Eubacteria
○ Domain: Eukarya
□ Plantae
□ Animalia
□ Archezoa Under Protista before
□ Chromista
□ Protista
□ Fungi
Note: There are many kingdom schemes due to advances on technology

Classification
- Placing of organisms into categories according to a particular system and in conformity with a particular nomenclatural syste m
- means of organizing information about an organism wherein it gives us idea about ancestry and lineage

○ Artificial system of classification

- System of planning organisms under groups/categories based on common characteristics

○ Natural system of classification

- Based on totality of characteristics including ancestry and lineage

Principles of classification
○ Based on character correlations and discontinuities of variation which are necessary for characterizations and delineation
○ Ordering of organisms into a hierarchy of taxa (species as the basic unit)
○ Orderly arrangement of system designed to express interrelationships
○ Provides a system for efficient and effective information storage
○ No character is more important than the other

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 ○ Orderly arrangement of system designed to express interrelationships
○ Provides a system for efficient and effective information storage
○ No character is more important than the other

May be more Diagnostic character

significant - Defines organism from another
organism
○ Limits of taxon cannot usually be defined quantitatively / qualitatively by a single characteristics
○ Assignment of natural population systems to taxa and the hierarchical arrangement involves judgement

Taxon
- Taxonomic unit at any level

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