18.1 Assessment BIOLOGY RESEARCH

Lesley F.

Biology 902

November 7, 2013

18.1 (1-3)

1a. What are the two goals of systematics?

The goal of systematics is to organize living things into groups that have biological meaning. (Taxa or Taxon)

1b. Why do common names of organisms – like daisy or mountain lion – often cause problems for scientists?

The common names of organism often cause problems for scientist because common names can change meaning among languages and from place to place.

1c. The scientific name of the sugar maple is Acer saccharum. What does each part of the name designate?

Acer is the genus and saccharum is the species. Acer means maple and saccharum means sugar.

2a. List the ranks in the Linnaean system of classification, beginning with the smallest.

1. Species

2. Genius

3. Family

4. Order

5. Class

6. Phylum

7. Kingdom

2b. Which group of organisms are more closely associated all of organisms in the same kingdom or all the organisms in the same order?

All the organisms in the same order of course. In the kingdom, its an overall summary of the organism it can contain foxes and turtles – to total different things, meanwhile members of the order are between minor similarities and differences.

2c. What do scientists mean when they say that species is the only “natural” rank in the classification?

Species are a fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of interbreeding.

3. Which category has more biological meaning – all brown birds or all birds descended from a hawk-like ancestor? Why?

All birds descended from a hawk-like ancestor, because by just saying all brown birds, it could be any bird in any order or family. Whereas hawk like birds would just refer to the branch of hawks (its more specific).