Describing and Arranging Organisms Flashcards
Essentialism
- distinguishing species before evolution
- different species have different essences
Population Thinking
- distinguishing species after evolution
- interbreeding members descended from common ancestor
Biological Taxonomy
fitting into higher more inclusive groups
Artificial Classification
group defining attributes that don’t correlate with other attributes
-the colour green, not all green things are related
Natural Classification
group defining attributes that do correlate with other attributes
- relationships based on common descent
- more inclusive groups have a more recent common ancestor
What compelled natural historians to go beyond ancient authors?
1) forest of northern Europe had different species than southern Europe
2) Printing press allowed for quality images
3) voyages to other continents brought back animals/plants that they hadn’t seen before
Zoologists
more in the function and adaptation
Botanists
more interested in identification and classification
-important to classify plants for medicine
2 most famous botanists
1) Theophrastus
2) Dioscoride
how many plants did they describe
500-600 each
Luca Ghini
-invented the herbarium
What was Buffon interested in
the description of organisms, not as much how they were classified and arranged
What was Buffon the director of
Royal Botanical Garden (greatest natural history museum in the world)
-published 36 volumes of natural history, 8 more were published after his death
4 basic types of beliefs (religion)
1) Theism: one or more gods that have ongoing involvement
2) Deism: upper level created universe but no involvement
3) Pantheism: universe has some order but no god created it
4) Atheism: gods don’t exist
Buffons contributions
1) Classification - hierarchy, individuals who can reproduce together
2) Biogeography - how organisms are distributed around the world (Noah’s ark landed on Mt. Ararat)
Buffon’s (evolutionary?) view
- interior mound of species is unchangeable
- differed a bit by spontaneous generation (why all people don’t look alike)
- minimal evolutionary adaptation
Buffon’s Law
different regions with similar environments will have different animals
Why did Buffon reject common descent?
no intermediates
- zebra and horse don’t make zorse
- organisms evolve but don’t branch
Buffon’s Epochs of Nature
1) Comet hit sun, ejecting debris
2) Debris cooled to form planets
3) oceans formed, marine life formed spontaneously
4) water retreated, continents formed
5) Animal life was spontaneously generated
6) Continents fragmented
7) humans appeared and took over
How long did Buffon think the Earth is
75,000 years
-earth temp is indicator of its age
Arrow of Time
organisms always had to adapt to colder temperatures or migrate (adapt to colder = evolution??)
Linnaeus
-manager of scientific information
what was 2 major issues for managing scientific info
1) how to arrange organisms in a natural way that tells you about nature (grouping)
2) how to access the scientific literature of these plants
How did Linnaeus change nomenclature
he separated the name and the description
How did Linnaeus classify plants
-according to their sexual features # of stamens (male part) and pistils (female part)
What did Linnaeus say is the next mission of Biology
to form natural groups
-knew the importance of natural group but not enough info to form them himself
What kind of hierarchy did Linnaeus form
Inclusive hierarchy
- groups within groups
- made the relatedness of organisms obvious
- evolutionary relationships without fully grasping what he was doing
What did Lamrack invent?
- biological keys
- keys used to identify specimens by series of 2-fold decisions
