BIOL 1201 Study Guide - Gene Duplication, Carl Woese, Polytomy
Document Summary
The discipline of systematics classifies organisms based on shared relationships. Systematists use fossil, molecular, and genetic data to infer these relationships. Organizing or grouping things helps in dealing with them. The same idea holds true for the study of life. If organisms (or any items) are to be grouped then they need a name. The origins of taxonomy date back to aristotle. There are many ways that organisms may be grouped. One of the early classification systems placed the animals in one group and the plants in another. The bacteria, fungi and many protists were considered plants while some of the protists were grouped with the animals. Plants vs. animals was an imperfect system and as a result didn"t last. The foundation for modern classification, binomial nomenclature, was developed by linnaeus in the. Linnaeus also developed a scheme where organisms are classified or grouped into categories.
