Species and taxonomy

• What is a species

  a group of organisms living in a population that share a common ancestor with similar characteristics and can interbreed to produce fertile offspring
• what is courtship behaviour

  when animals exhibit a behaviour that results in mating and reproduction it can involve visual chemical or auditory stimuli

  important for species recognition
• what is taxonomy 


  practise of biological classification
• what is phylogenetic classification

  arranges species into groups bases on evolutionary origins and relationships

  no overlap between groups called taxons and multiple called taxas

  hierarchal system between taxas
• what is a domain

  higher rank of taxas

  3 types

  Archae (prokaryotes)

  bacteria (prokaryotes)

  eukarya (Eukaryotes )
• what is archae 


  extremophile prokaryotes . live in extreme environments

  no nucleus

  separated from bacteria as have unique lipid in membranes

  no peptidoglycan in cell walls

  ribosomal structure are more similar to eukaryotic than prokaryotic

  DNA transcription similar to eukaryotes
• Order of taxas 


  Domain

  Kingdom

  Phylum

  Class

  order

  family

  genus

  species
• what are binomials 


  scientific name of a species

  consists of a organisms genus and species

  when writing genius has capital letter and species is underlined
• how have scientist furthered investigation in relationships between species

  advances in genome sequencing and immunology
• what are the three types of data used in genome sequencing

  DNA

  mRNA

  amino acids (of a protein)
• what does sequencing do

  can determine sequence of bases and amino acids and compare them between different organisms to see familiarities and differences .

  scientist select specific proteins of genome and compare between organisms
• what can cause difference in sequencing between species

  species that have been separated for a long time have greater time for mutations to accumulate and change their DNA mRNA and amino acid sequence
• what is immunology 


  using techniques to study proteins of organisms for comparison

  protein albumin is found in many species and used in experiments
• method of immunology 


  pure albino samples extracted from blood samples from multiple species

  samples injected into different rabbits

  each rabbit produces antibodies for specific type of albumen

  different antibodies extracted from rabbits and mixed with the different albumin samples

  the precipitate (antibody- antigen complex) resulting from each sample is weighd .

  greater the weight of precipitate greater degree of complementarity between antibody and albumin