Biodiversity Flashcards
What is a species?
A group of similar organisms that can breed together to produce fertile offspring
What two things are courtship rituals essential for?
- species recognition
- successful mating
How do courtship rituals allow species recognition?
Each ritual is a sequence of actions which is UNIQUE to each species
In what four ways do courtship rituals result in successful mating?
- helps identify own species
- determines if females are in the receptive stage of the sexual cycle
- synchronises mating so there is a maximum probability of the Sperm + egg meeting
- forms a pair bond so organisms have high affinity for each other from successful mating and raising off offspring
What is classification?
The process of organising living organisms into groups
What is artificial classification?
Classifying organisms based off of physical characteristics
phylogeny?
Shows the evolutionary relationship between organisms by reflecting the evolutionary branch that led to the organism
What is phylogenetic classification?
Grouping based on evolutionary relationships
What is phylogeny demonstrated by?
Cladograms - tree like diagrams
The branches show a common ancestor
What are cladograms based off?
Shared features derived from common ancestors
What are shared features also known as?
Homologous characteristics
What is a hierarchy?
Where groups are contained within larger groups that do not overlap
What is each group in a phylogenetic system called?
A taxon
What is the order of each taxa?
-Domain
-Kingdom
-Phylum
-Class
-Order
-Family
-Genus
-Species
What three domains are there?
1) Bacteria (single celled)
2) Eukarya
3) Archaea (single celled)
What are the 5 Kingdoms?
1- animalia
2- fungi
3- plantae
4- protoctista
5- prokaryota
What 4 kingdoms are under eukaryota?
Animalia, fungi, plantae, protoctista
What kingdom comes under bacteria or archaea?
Prokaryota