Classification Flashcards
Phylogeny
The study of evolutionary history of how groups of organisms are related and evolved from each other
Phylogenetic trees
Show over the course of time (running across the side) different species diverged from each other to produce different species
And shows common ancestry etc
Each branch point on the phylogenetic tree shows
A common ancestor
How to find which species diverged first?
Go furthest back along the time scale, and the species who diverged earlier to be a still remaining species diverged first
How to find which species diverged latest?
Find the species diverged from a Common ancestor at the start of the time scale.
So branch point is closest to modern times
Closely related species…
Diverged away from each other recently
Taxonomy
Classification by naming organisms and organising them into different groups so it’s easy to identify and study them
The 8 taxons
Domain
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Soup
How to remember the 8 taxons
Dear
King
Philip
Came
Over
For
Good
Soup
What do we take into account when putting organisms into different taxons?
Phylogeny (evolutionary history of common ancestors + close relation to other species)
DNA sequence data
Going down the taxons…
There are more groups within each level but fewer organisms in these groups
Hierarchy
The higher the group within the levels, the larger it is with the highest number of organisms in it
The bottom groups in the species level have only 1 organism
Smaller groups (taxons) are placed into larger groups (taxons)
No overlap
Organisms can only belong to one group at each level of this hierachy
Species
A group of similar organisms classified together in the same group at the bottom level if they are able to reproduce and give a fertile offspring
Binomial naming system
Genus + species = the name
Genus is capitalised, species is lower case, name is underlined
