Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Means of Classification
- Phylogeny
- This is the classification of
organisms depending on their
evolutionary history.
- A phylogenetic tree is used to represent
organisms of different species and how
closely they are related.
- The closer they are, the more
related they are, in terms of the
ancestor species they have evolved
from.
- For example, humans are closely related
to the orangutan and chimpanzee, as they
are next to each other the phylogenetic
tree.
- This means that these three
organisms must have
evolved from the same
species.
- taxonomy
- This is the science of
naming organisms.
- There are 8 levels of
classifying organisms, each
one known as a taxa.
- The whole thing is known as
hierarchy which means groups
within groups with no overlaps.
- The 8 groups are: Domain, Kingdom,
Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus,
Species.
- Organisms are named using their genus
(begins with capital letter), followed by
their species (all small letters.
- For example, Homo
sapiens (humans).
- 'Homo' is the genus and 'sapiens' is
the species, of humans.
- Courtship
behaviour
- This is the behaviours of
organisms to attract a mate
of the same species.
- As different species have different
courtship behaviour, this can be used to
classify organisms.
- It prevents the mating of
wrong organisms, of
different species.
- It also allows breeding to occur
between organisms of the same
maturity, e.g. not too young or too old.
- There are two types: simple and
complex.
- Peacocks use their feathers
as an attractive visual
display. This is simple.
- The blue-footed booby does
a complex dance routine.
- The male red
deer simply
makes a loud
noise.
- Using
DNA
- During this, the DNA of certain
organisms can be extracted.
- Then the genome (the full set of DNA
bases) can be compared.
- The less differences there are between the two
strands, the more closely related the two organisms
are.
- You can also compare the
amino acid sequence of
two organisms protein.
- The more similar they are, the closer
they are related.
- Immunological
comparisons
- This is simply
comparing the
antibodies of two
different organisms.
- This is done by using an antigen and seeing
whether they bind to form an
antigen-antibody complex.
- If they both do, the organisms are related.
- Biodiversity
- This is the number of different organisms
on Earth, as well as the genetic variation
between them.
- Farmers reduce the biodiversity of
crops making it difficult to classify, by
using selective breeding instead of
natural selection.
Anmerkungen:
- Natural selection is when organisms naturally select features which help it to survive pass it on to the next generation.
- Selective breeding is when humans deliberately choose a feature that will benefit them, and make them breed. THIS MAY NOT HELP WITH SURVIVAL!
- They use pesticides which kill insects.
- They use fertilisers which flow into rivers
through desertification, killing fish.
- They use monoculture, which
supports fewer organisms.
Anmerkungen:
- Monoculture is the growing of only one type of crop only.
- They cut bushes
and hedgerows,
destroying habitat.