THE LIVING WORLD

• Nomenclature is the process of standardising the naming of living organisms so that each organism is known by the same name worldwide
• Naming is only possible when the organism is described correctly and we know to what organism the name is attached to, which is identification
• Scientists have established procedures to assign a scientific name to each known organism, which is acceptable to biologists worldwide
• For plants, scientific names are based on agreed principles and criteria provided in the International Code for Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN)
• Animal names are based on the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)
• Scientific names ensure that each organism has only one name and that the name has not been used for any other known organism
• Each scientific name has two components: the Generic name and the specific epithet, forming the Binomial nomenclature system
• Biological names are generally in Latin and written in italics, derived from Latin irrespective of their origin
• The first word in a biological name represents the genus, while the second component denotes the specific epithet
• Both words in a biological name, when handwritten, are separately underlined or printed in italics to indicate their Latin origin
• The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter, while the specific epithet starts with a small letter
• The name of the author appears after the specific epithet, written in an abbreviated form to indicate who first described the species
• Classification is the process of grouping organisms into convenient categories based on easily observable characters
• Taxa are the scientific terms for these categories, indicating different levels of classification
• Taxonomy is the process of classifying all living organisms based on external and internal structure, cell structure, development process, and ecological information
• Characterisation, identification, classification, and nomenclature are the basic processes of taxonomy
• Systematics is the study of relationships among organisms, considering evolutionary relationships
• Classification involves a hierarchy of steps, with each step representing a rank or category, forming the taxonomic hierarchy
• Species are groups of individual organisms with fundamental similarities, distinguished from closely related species based on distinct morphological differences
• Taxonomic categories include kingdom, phylum/division, class, order, family, genus, and species
• Genus comprises a group of related species with more characters in common compared to species of other genera
• Family includes related genera with fewer similarities compared to genus and species
• Class includes related orders, based on aggregates of characters
• Order is an assemblage of families with a few similar characters, less than the different genera in a family
• Phylum includes classes with common features, such as presence of notochord and dorsal hollow neural system
• Kingdom is the highest category, with animals in Kingdom Animalia and plants in Kingdom Plantae
• Taxonomic categories from species to kingdom are shown in ascending order, with lower taxa sharing more characteristics within the taxon