Describing and Arranging Organisms - MT2 - Part 2 Flashcards
Buffons law
Different regions that have similar environments will have different plants and animals
- shara (eg. euphorbia + camels)
- arizon (eg. cadi + camels)
Evolution
The interior mould of a species is unchangeable
Who is Mayr?
He is not an evolutionist, but is the father of evolution
What did Buffon say about evolution?
There is no common intermediate between 2 species
- eg) horses and zebras were not called zohorses
What did Buffon introduce?
History to the study of life
What does biology have and not have? (2)
- Has a past
2. Does not have a history
What 7 periods in the histroy of life did Buffon propose?
- A comet hit the sun, ejecting debris
- Some of the debris cooled to form the planets, including the earth
- Oceans formed, marine life was spontaneously generated
- The waters retreated and the continents formed
- explains fossils on mountains - Animal life was generated on land
- not all life formed at the same time - The continents fragmented
- Humans appeared and took over
What is the earths temperature an indicator of?
Its age
- since the earth has been cooling ever since its formation it can indicate its age
- known as the arrow of time
What was Buffon’s importance for later evolutionary thought? (5)
- Very popular writer
- his ideas were widely circulated - Concept of adaptation to a changing world
- Weakening of essentialism
- Rejected of genesis as useful document
- Biography
- this is the most important one
What was Carl Linnaeus the first to use?
Binomial nomenclature consistently
- in doing so he separated the naming of organisms from the description of the organism
What did Linnaeus form?
A nested hierarchical classification system
What did Linnaeus use when classifying plants?
Sexual features
What were Linnaeus’ 4 groups of classification?
- Class
- Order
- Genus
- Species
What did Linnaeus understand?
The importance of entirely natural groups
- although he didnt know enough about plants to form strictly natural groups in his own taxonomy
What did Linnaeus think about plants?
That they were sexual
- classes –> number of stamens
- order –> number of pistals
- genera –> natural
What did Linnaeus inspire?
The cataloguing of biodiversity
- put species in a rational system
What was a pro to Linnaeus’s system of evolutionary thought?
Nested hierarchy did suggest a relationship
What were 2 cons to Linnaeus’s system of evolutionary thought?
- Species boundaries were fixed
2. Relationship suggested by nesting
Who invented biological keys?
Lamarck
Biological keys
Is a printed of a computer-aided device that aids the identification if biological entities, such as plants, animals, fossils, microorganisms and pollen grains
What term did Lamarck invent?
The term biology
What are biological keys used for?
To identify specimens of known plants by a species of 2 fold decisions
- simple tools to access information
Dichotomous keys for leaves
Is a tool that allows the user to determine the identity of items in the natural world, such as trees, wildflowers, mammals. reptile, rocks and fish
