History of tax

• Taxonomy


  The practice and science of classification, more specifically the classification of organisms
• Taxis

  Order or arrangement
• Nomos


  Law or science
• Western scientific taxonomy started in Greek and is divided into pre-Linnaean and post-Linnaean
• The most important works are cited and the progress of taxonomy are described up to the era of Carl Linnaeus, who founded modern taxonomy
• Pre-Linnaean taxonomy


  • Earliest taxonomy
  • The Greeks and Romans
  • The Herbalists
  • Early taxonomists
• Aristotle


  • Wrote Historia Animalia
  • Classified animals with blood (live-bearing and egg-bearing) and animals without blood (insects, crustaceans, mollusks)
• Great Chain of Being (Ladder of Life)

  Aristotle's belief that creatures were arranged in a graded scale of perfection rising from plants up to man
• Theophrastus


  • Wrote a classification of all known plants, De Historia Plantarum, which contained 480 species
  • Classification was based on growth form
• Dioscorides


  • Wrote De Materia Medica, which contained around 600 species, was used in medicine until the 16th century
  • Classification was based on the medicinal properties of the species
• Plinius


  • Wrote Naturalis Historia, a work of 160 volumes, in which he described several plants and gave them Latin names
  • Father of Botanical Latin
• Herbalists wrote beautiful plants later named by Linnaeus in honour of them: Brunfelsia, Mattiolia, Turnera, Lobelia, Gerardia and Fuchsia
• Caesalpino


  • Wrote De Plantis, a work that contained 1500 species
  • Classification was based on growth habit together with fruit and seed form
• Bauhin brothers


  • Wrote the Pinax Theatri Botanici, listing 6000 species
  • Included synonymes, which was a great necessity of the time
  • Recognized genera and species as major taxonomic levels
• John Ray


  • Established species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy
  • Published Methodus Plantarum Nova, which contained around 18 000 plant species
  • Classification was based on many combined characters
• Joseph Pitton de Tournefort


  • Constructed a botanical classification that came to rule in botanical taxonomy until the time of Carl Linnaeus
  • Published Institutiones Rei Herbariae, in which around 9000 species were listed in 698 genera
  • Put primary emphasis on the classification of genera
• Linnaean era was the starting point of modern taxonomy and transformed botany and zoology into a science
• Carl Linnaeus


  • Introduced trivial names in his works Species Plantarum (global flora) and Systema Naturae (global fauna)
  • Counted 8530 flowering plant species
• Linnaeus published Scientia, Critica botanica, Genera Plantarum, and Philosophia botanica, which transformed botany and zoology into a science
• Post-Linnaean taxonomy


  • Natural system emerging in France
  • Rules for nomenclature
  • From phenetics to phylogenies
  • Phylocode

  
• Georges-Luise Leclerc de Buffon


  • Criticized Linnaeus' work and found it wrong to impose an artificial order on the disorderly natural world
  • Approached taxonomy by describing the world rather than classifying it
• Michel Adanson


  • Launched the idea that in classification one should not put greater emphasis on some characters than on others, but use a great range of characters
  • Criticized Linnaeus' works and considered Tournefort's classification far superior
• Antoine Laurent de Jussieu


  • Changed the system of plants with his Genera Plantarum, in which he launched a natural system based on many characters that came to be a foundation of modern classification
  • Divided the plants into acotyledons, monocotyledons and dicotyledons and established the family rank
• Lamarckism


  Evolutionary theory including inheritance of acquired characters
• Augustin Pyramus de Candolle


  • Stated that published names should have priority according to the date of publication, starting with Linnaeus
• Alphons de Candolle


  • Discussed the rules of nomenclature and suggested different starting points for botanical taxonomy
• Otto Kuntze


  • Changed 1000 generic names and 30 000 species names in his work Revisio generum Plantarum
• Hugh Edwin Strickland


  • Authored the "Strickland Code", the first nomenclatural laws for zoology, which was later modified to be applicable to fossils
• Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace launched the evolutionary theory, while Ernst Haeckel and August Wilhelm Eicher constructed the evolutionary tree
• Cladistic taxonomy


  • Only similarities grouping species (synapomorphies) should be used in classification
  • Taxa should include all descendants from one single ancestor (the rule of monophyly)
• Since the birth of molecular biology, similarities between organisms can be compared at the protein and DNA level, making cladistic taxonomy more precise than ever
• Phylocode

  The International Code of Phylogenetic Nomenclature, a movement to change the nomenclature away from the Linnaean system to one where the evolutionary relationships between organisms are better represented
• The main idea of Phylocode is that only species and clades should have names, and the definitions of taxa should be based on evolutionary relationships rather than morphological characteristics

  
• The Phylocode movement has inspired a lot of controversy and hostility, and as of now it is generally considered an unstable substitute for the Linnaean system