Fruit

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Fruit

In broad terms, a Fruit is a structure of a Plants that contains its seeds.

The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain Plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state, such as apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, juniper berries and bananas. seed-associated structures that do not fit these informal criteria are usually called by other names, such as vegetables, pods, nut, ears and cones.

In biology (botany), a "fruit" is a part of a Flowering plant that derives from specific tissues of the flower, mainly one or more ovaries. Taken strictly, this definition excludes many structures that are "fruits" in the common sense of the term, such as those produced by non-Flowering plants (like juniper berries, which are the seed-containing female cones of conifers), and fleshy fruit-like growths that develop from other plant tissues close to the fruit (accessory fruit, or more rarely false fruit or pseudocarp), such as cashew fruits. Often the botanical fruit is only part of the common fruit, or is merely adjacent to it. On the other hand, the botanical sense includes many structures that are not commonly called "fruits", such as bean pods, corn kernels, wheat grains, tomatoes, and many more. However, there are several variants of the biological definition of fruit that emphasize different aspects of the enormous variety that is found among plant fruits.

fruits (in either sense of the word) are the means by which many plants disseminate seeds. Most edible fruits, in particular, were evolved by plants in order to exploit animals as a means for seed dispersal, and many animals (including humans to some extent) have become dependent on fruits as a source of food. fruits account for a substantial fraction of world's agricultural output, and some (such as the apple and the pomegranate) have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings.

Fungus also have fruit. When a Fungus begins to produce spores, the section of the fungus producing the spores is called the fruiting body of the fungus.

Simple fruit

Simple fruits can be either dry or fleshy, and result from the ripening of a simple or compound ovary in a flower with only one pistil. Dry fruits may be either dehiscent (opening to discharge seeds), or indehiscent (not opening to discharge seeds). Types of dry, simple fruits, with examples of each, are:

* achene - Most commonly seen in aggregate fruits (e.g. strawberry)
* capsule – (Brazil nut)
* caryopsis – (wheat)
* Cypsela - An achene-like fruit derived from the individual florets in a capitulum (e.g. dandelion).
* fibrous drupe – (coconut, walnut)
* follicle – is formed from a single carpel, and opens by one suture (e.g. milkweed). More commonly seen in aggregate fruits (e.g. magnolia)
* legume – (pea, bean, peanut)
* loment - a type of indehiscent legume
* nut – (hazelnut, beech, oak acorn)
* samara – (elm, ash, maple key)
* schizocarp – (carrot seed)
* silique – (radish seed)
* silicle – (shepherd's purse)
* utricle – (beet)

fruits in which part or all of the pericarp (fruit wall) is fleshy at maturity are simple fleshy fruits. Types of fleshy, simple fruits (with examples) are:

* berry – (redcurrant, gooseberry, tomato, cranberry)
* stone fruit or drupe (plum, cherry, peach, apricot, olive)
An aggregate fruit, or etaerio, develops from a single flower with numerous simple pistils.

* Magnolia and Peony, collection of follicles developing from one flower.
* Sweet gum, collection of capsules.
* Sycamore, collection of achenes.
* Teasel, collection of cypsellas
* Tuliptree, collection of samaras.

The pome fruits of the Family Rosaceae, (including apples, pears, rosehips, and saskatoon berry) are a syncarpous fleshy fruit, a simple fruit, developing from a half-inferior ovary.

Schizocarp fruits form from a syncarpous ovary and do not really dehisce, but split into segments with one or more seeds; they include a number of different forms from a wide range of families. Carrot seed is an example.

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Flowering plant

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Flowering plant

The Flowering plant (angiosperms), also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing Plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies (derived characteristics). These characteristics include flowers, endosperm within the seeds, and the production of Fruits that contain the seeds.

The ancestors of Flowering Plants diverged from gymnosperms around 245–202 million years ago, and the first Flowering Plants known to exist are from 140 million years ago. They diversified enormously during the Lower Cretaceous and became widespread around 100 million years ago, but replaced conifers as the dominant trees only around 60-100 million years ago.

Flowering plant diversity

The number of species of Flowering Plants is estimated to be in the range of 250,000 to 400,000. The number of Families in APG (1998) was 462. In APG II (2003) it is not settled; at maximum it is 457, but within this number there are 55 optional segregates, so that the minimum number of families in this system is 402. In APG III (2009) there are 415 families.

The diversity of Flowering Plants is not evenly distributed. Nearly all species belong to the eudicot (75%), monocot (23%) and magnoliid (2%) clades. The remaining 5 clades contain a little over 250 species in total, i.e., less than 0.1% of Flowering Plant diversity, divided among 9 families.

The most diverse families of Flowering Plants, in their APG circumscriptions, in order of number of Species.

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Sexual Reproduction

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Sexual Reproduction

Sexual Reproduction is characterized by processes that pass a combination of genetic material to offspring, resulting in increased genetic diversity. The two main processes are: meiosis, involving the halving of the number of chromosomes; and fertilization, involving the fusion of two gametes and the restoration of the original number of chromosomes. During meiosis, the chromosomes of each pair usually cross over to achieve homologous recombination.

The evolution of Sexual Reproduction is a major puzzle. The first fossilized evidence of sexually reproducing Organisms is from eukaryotes of the Stenian period, about 1 to 1.2 billion years ago. Sexual Reproduction is the primary method of reproduction for the vast majority of macroscopic organisms, including almost all animals and Plants. Bacterial conjugation, the transfer of DNA between two bacteria, is often mistakenly confused with Sexual Reproduction, because the mechanics are similar.

A major question is why Sexual Reproduction persists when parthenogenesis appears in some ways to be a superior form of reproduction. Contemporary evolutionary thought proposes some explanations. It may be due to selection pressure on the clade itself—the ability for a population to radiate more rapidly in response to a changing environment through sexual recombination than parthenogenesis allows. Alternatively, Sexual Reproduction may allow for the "ratcheting" of evolutionary speed as one clade competes with another for a limited resource.

Plant Reproduction

Animals typically produce male gametes called sperm, and female gametes called eggs and ova, following immediately after meiosis. With the gametes produced directly by meiosis. Plants on the other hand have mitosis occurring in spores, which are produced by meiosis. The spores germinate into the gametophyte phase. The gametophytes of different groups of Plantsvary in size; angiosperms have as few as three cells in pollen, and mosses and other so called primitive Plants may have several million cells. Plants have an alternation of generations where the sporophyte phase is succeeded by the gametophyte phase. The sporophyte phase produces spores within the sporangium by meiosis.

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Plant Reproduction

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Plant Reproduction

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Plant Reproduction

Plant Reproduction is the production of new individuals or offspring in Plants, which can be accomplished by sexual or asexual means. Sexual Reproduction produces offspring by the fusion of gametes, resulting in offspring genetically different from the parent or parents. Asexual Reproduction produces new individuals without the fusion of gametes, genetically identical to the parent plants and each other, except when mutations occur. In seed plants, the offspring can be packaged in a protective seed, which is used as an agent of dispersal.

Asexual Reproduction

Plants have two main types of asexual reproduction in which new plants are produced that are genetically identical clones of the parent individual. "Vegetative" reproduction involves a vegetative piece of the original plant (budding, tillering, etc.) and is distinguished from "apomixis", which is a "replacement" for sexual reproduction, and in some cases involves seeds. Apomixis occurs in many plant Species and also in some non-plant Organisms. For apomixis and similar processes in non-plant organisms, see parthenogenesis.

Natural vegetative reproduction is mostly a process found in herbaceous and woody perennial plants, and typically involves structural modifications of the stem or roots and in a few species leaves. Most plant species that employ vegetative reproduction, do so as a means to perennialize the plants, allowing them to survive from one season to the next and often facilitating their expansion in size. A plant that persists in a location through vegetative reproduction of individuals constitutes a clonal colony, a single ramet, or apparent individual, of a clonal colony is genetically identical to all others in the same colony. The distance that a plant can move during vegetative reproduction is limited, though some plants can produce ramets from branching rhizomes or stolons that cover a wide area, often in only a few growing seasons. In a sense, this process is not one of "reproduction" but one of survival and expansion of biomass of the individual. When an individual Organism increases in size via cell multiplication and remains intact, the process is called "vegetative growth". However, in vegetative reproduction, the new plants that result are new individuals in almost every respect except genetic. A major disadvantage to vegetative reproduction, is the transmission of pathogens from parent to daughter plants; it is uncommon for pathogens to be transmitted from the plant to its seeds, though there are occasions when it occurs.

Seeds generated by apomixis are a means of asexual reproduction, involving the formation and dispersal of seeds that do not originate from the fertilization of the embryos. Hawkweed (Hieracium), dandelion (Taraxacum), some Citrus (Citrus) and Kentucky blue grass (Poa pratensis) all use this form of asexual reproduction. Pseudogamy occurs in some plants that have apomictic seeds, where pollination is often needed to initiate embryo growth, though the pollen contributes no genetic material to the developing offspring. Other forms of apomixis occur in plants also, including the generation of a plantlet in replacement of a seed or the generation of bulbils instead of flowers, where new cloned individuals are produced.

Human uses of asexual reproduction

The most common form of plant reproduction utilized by people is seeds, but a number of asexual methods are utilized which are usually enhancements of natural processes, including: cutting, grafting, budding, layering, division, sectioning of rhizomes or roots, stolons, tillers (suckers) and artificial propagation by laboratory tissue cloning. Asexual methods are most often used to propagate cultivars with individual desirable characteristics that do not come true from seed. Fruit tree propagation is frequently performed by budding or grafting desirable cultivars (clones), onto rootstocks that are also clones, propagated by layering.

In horticulture, a "cutting" is a branch that has been cut off from a mother plant below an internode and then rooted, often with the help of a rooting liquid or powder containing hormones. When a full root has formed and leaves begin to sprout anew, the clone is a self-sufficient plant, genetically identical to the mother plant. Examples include cuttings from the stems of blackberries (Rubus occidentalis), African violets (Saintpaulia), verbenas (Verbena) to produce new plants. A related use of cuttings is grafting, where a stem or bud is joined onto a different stem. Nurseries offer for sale trees with grafted stems that can produce four or more varieties of related Fruits, including apples. The most common usage of grafting is the propagation of cultivars onto already rooted plants, sometimes the rootstock is used to dwarf the plants or protect them from root damaging pathogens.

Since vegetatively propagated plants are clones, they are important tools in plant research. When a clone is grown in various conditions, differences in growth can be ascribes to environmental effects instead of genetic differences.

Sexual Reproduction

Sexual reproduction involves two fundamental processes, meiosis which rearranges the genes and reduces the number of chromosomes, and fusion of gametes which restores the chromosome to a complete diploid number. In between these two processes, different types of plants vary. In plants and algae that undergo alternation of generations, a gametophyte is the multicellular structure, or phase, that is haploid, containing a single set of chromosomes:

The gametophyte produces male or female gametes (or both), by a process of cell division called mitosis. The fusion of male and female gametes produces a diploid zygote, which develops by repeated mitotic cell divisions into a multicellular sporophyte. Because the sporophyte is the product of the fusion of two haploid gametes, its cells are diploid, containing two sets of chromosomes. The mature sporophyte produces spores by a process called meiosis, sometimes referred to as "reduction division" because the chromosome pairs are separated once again to form single sets. The spores are therefore once again haploid and develop into a haploid gametophyte. In land plants such as ferns, mosses and liverworts the gametophyte is very small, as in ferns and their relatives. In Flowering plants (angiosperms) It is reduced to only a few cells, where the female gametophyte (embryo sac) is known as a megagametophyte and the male gametophyte (pollen) is called a microgametophyte.

History of sexual reproduction

Unlike animals, plants are immobile, and cannot seek out sexual partners for reproduction. In the evolution of early plants, abiotic means, including water and wind, transported sperm for reproduction. The first plants were aquatic and released sperm freely into the water to be carried with the currents. Primitive land plants like liverworts and mosses had motile sperm that swam in a thin film of water or were splashed in water droplets from the male reproduction organs onto the female organs. As taller and more complex plants evolved, modifications in the alternation of generations evolved; in the Paleozoic era progymnosperms reproduced by using spores dispersed on the wind. The seed plants including seed ferns, conifers and cordaites, which were all gymnosperms, evolved 350 million years ago; they had pollen grains that contained the male gametes for protection of the sperm during the process of transfer from the male to female parts. It is believed that insects fed on the pollen, and plants thus evolved to use insects to actively carry pollen from one plant to the next. Seed producing plants, which include the angiosperms and the gymnosperms, have heteromorphic alternation of generations with large sporophytes containing much reduced gametophytes. Angiosperms have distinctive reproductive organs called flowers, with carpels, and the female gametophyte is greatly reduced to a female embryo sac, with as few as eight cells. The male gametophyte consists of the pollen grains. The sperm of seed plants are non-motile, except for two older groups of plants, the Cycadophyta and the Ginkgophyta, which have flagellated sperm.

Flowering plants

Flowering plants are the dominant plant form on land and they reproduce by sexual and asexual means. Often their most distinguishing feature is their reproductive organs, commonly called flowers. Sexual reproduction in flowering plants involves the production of male and female gametes, the transfer of the male gametes to the female ovules in a process called pollination. After pollination occurs, fertilization happens and the ovules grow into seeds with in a fruit. After the seeds are ready for dispersal, the fruit ripens and by various means the seeds are freed from the fruit and after varying amounts of time and under specific conditions the seeds germinate and grow into the next generation.

The anther produces male gametophytes, the sperm is produced in pollen grains, which attach to the stigma on top of a carpel, in which the female gametophytes (inside ovules) are located. After the pollen tube grows through the carpel's style, the sex cell nuclei from the pollen grain migrate into the ovule to fertilize the egg cell and endosperm nuclei within the female gametophyte in a process termed double fertilization. The resulting zygote develops into an embryo, while the triploid endosperm (one sperm cell plus two female cells) and female tissues of the ovule give rise to the surrounding tissues in the developing seed. The ovary, which produced the female gametophyte(s), then grows into a fruit, which surrounds the seed(s). Plants may either self-pollinate or cross-pollinate. Nonflowering plants like ferns, moss and liverworts use other means of sexual reproduction.

Sexual expression

Many plants have evolved a complex sexuality, which is expressed in different combinations of their reproductive organs. Some species have separate male and female individuals, some have separate male and female flowers on the same plant, abut the majority of plants have both male and female parts in the same flower. Some plants change their gender expression depending on a number of factors like age, time of day, or because of environmental conditions. Plant sexuality also varies within different populations of some species.

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Asexual Reproduction

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Asexual Reproduction

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Asexual Reproduction

Asexual Reproduction is a mode of reproduction by which offspring arise from a single parent, and inherit the genes of that parent only, it is reproduction which does not involve meiosis, ploidy reduction, or fertilization. A more stringent definition is agamogenesis which refers to reproduction without the fusion of gametes. Asexual reproduction is the primary form of reproduction for single-celled organisms such as the archaea, bacteria, and protists. Many plants and fungi reproduce asexually as well. While all prokaryotes reproduce asexually (without the formation and fusion of gametes), mechanisms for lateral gene transfer such as conjugation, transformation and transduction are sometimes likened to sexual reproduction. A lack of Sexual Reproduction is relatively rare among multicellular organisms, for reasons that are not completely understood. Current hypotheses suggest that Asexual reproduction may have short term benefits when rapid population growth is important or in stable environments, while sexual reproduction offers a net advantage by allowing more rapid generation of genetic diversity, allowing adaptation to changing environments.

Types of asexual reproduction

Binary fission

In binary fission the parent organism is replaced by two daughter organisms, because it literally divides in two. Many single-celled organisms, both prokaryotes (the archaea and the bacteria), and eukaryotes (such as protists and unicellular fungi), reproduce asexually through binary fission; most of these are also capable of sexual reproduction. Some single-celled organisms rely on one or more host Organism in order to reproduce.

Fragmentation

Fragmentation is a form of Asexual reproduction where a new organism grows from a fragment of the parent. Each fragment develops into a mature, fully grown individual. Fragmentation is seen in many organisms such as animals (some annelid worms and sea stars), fungi, and plants. Some plants have specialized structures for reproduction via fragmentation, such as gemmae in liverworts. Most lichens, which are a symbiotic union of a fungus and photosynthetic algae or bacteria, reproduce through fragmentation to ensure that new individuals contain both symbionts. These fragments can take the form of soredia, dust-like particles consisting of fungal hyphae wrapped around photobiont cells.

Alternation between sexual and asexual reproduction

Some Species alternate between the sexual and asexual strategies, an ability known as heterogamy, depending on conditions. For example, the freshwater crustacean Daphnia reproduces by parthenogenesis in the spring to rapidly populate ponds, then switches to sexual reproduction as the intensity of competition and predation increases. Many protists and fungi alternate between sexual and Asexual reproduction.

For example, the slime mold Dictyostelium undergoes binary fission (mitosis) as single-celled amoebae under favorable conditions. However, when conditions turn unfavorable, the cells aggregate and follow one of two different developmental pathways, depending on conditions. In the social pathway, they form a multicellular slug which then forms a fruiting body with asexually generated spores. In the sexual pathway, two cells fuse to form a giant cell that develops into a large cyst. When this macrocyst germinates, it releases hundreds of amoebic cells that are the product of meiotic recombination between the original two cells.

The hyphae of the common mold (Rhizopus) are capable of producing both mitotic as well as meiotic spores. Many algae similarly switch between sexual and Asexual reproduction. A number of plants use both sexual and asexual means to produce new plants, some species alter there primary mode of reproduction from sexual to asexual under varying environmental conditions.

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Plant

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Plant

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Plant

Plant are Living Organisms belonging to the Kingdom Plantae. They include familiar organisms such as trees, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The scientific study of plants, known as botany, has identified about 350,000 extant species of Plants, defined as seed Plants, bryophytes, ferns and fern allies. As of 2004, some 287,655 species had been identified, of which 258,650 are flowering and 18,000 bryophytes (see table below). Green plants, sometimes called Viridiplantae, obtain most of their energy from sunlight via a process called photosynthesis.

Definition

Aristotle divided all living things between Plants (which generally do not move), and animals (which often are mobile to catch their food). In Linnaeus' system, these became the Kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Metaphyta or Plantae) and Animalia (also called Metazoa). Since then, it has become clear that the Plantae as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new Kingdoms. However, these are still often considered Plants in many contexts, both technical and popular.

Diversity

About 350,000 species of Plants, defined as seed Plants, bryophytes, ferns and fern allies, are estimated to exist currently. As of 2004, some 287,655 species had been identified, of which 258,650 are Flowering plant, 16,000 bryophytes, 11,000 ferns and 8,000 green algae.

Phylogeny

A proposed phylogenetic tree of Plantae, after Kenrick and Crane, is as follows, with modification to the Pteridophyta from Smith et al. The Prasinophyceae may be a paraphyletic basal group to all Green plants.

Structure, growth, and development

Most of the solid material in a plant is taken from the atmosphere. Through a process known as photosynthesis, most Plants use the energy in sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plus water, into simple sugars. Parasitic Plants, on the other hand, use the resources of its host to grow. These sugars are then used as building blocks and form the main structural component of the plant. Chlorophyll, a green-colored, magnesium-containing pigment is essential to this process; it is generally present in plant leaves, and often in other plant parts as well.

Plants usually rely on soil primarily for support and water (in quantitative terms), but also obtain compounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other crucial elemental nutrients. Epiphytic and lithophytic Plants often depend on rainwater or other sources for nutrients and carnivorous Plants supplement their nutrient requirements with insect prey that they capture. For the majority of Plants to grow successfully they also require oxygen in the atmosphere and around their roots for respiration. However, some Plants grow as submerged aquatics, using oxygen dissolved in the surrounding water, and a few specialized vascular Plants, such as mangroves, can grow with their roots in anoxic conditions.

Factors affecting growth

The genotype of a plant affects its growth. For example, selected varieties of wheat grow rapidly, maturing within 110 days, whereas others, in the same environmental conditions, grow more slowly and mature within 155 days.

Growth is also determined by environmental factors, such as temperature, available water, available light, and available nutrients in the soil. Any change in the availability of these external conditions will be reflected in the Plants growth.

Biotic factors are also capable of affecting plant growth. Plants compete with other Plants for space, water, light and nutrients. Plants can be so crowded that no single individual produces normal growth, causing etiolation and chlorosis. Optimal plant growth can be hampered by grazing animals, suboptimal soil composition, lack of mycorrhizal fungi, and attacks by insects or plant diseases, including those caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses, and nematodes.

Simple Plants like algae may have short life spans as individuals, but their populations are commonly seasonal. Other Plants may be organized according to their seasonal growth pattern: annual Plants live and reproduce within one growing season, biennial Plants live for two growing seasons and usually reproduce in second year, and perennial Plants live for many growing seasons and continue to reproduce once they are mature. These designations often depend on climate and other environmental factors; Plants that are annual in alpine or temperate regions can be biennial or perennial in warmer climates. Among the vascular Plants, perennials include both evergreens that keep their leaves the entire year, and deciduous Plants which lose their leaves for some part of it. In temperate and boreal climates, they generally lose their leaves during the winter; many tropical Plants lose their leaves during the dry season.

The growth rate of Plants is extremely variable. Some mosses grow less than 0.001 millimeters per hour (mm/h), while most trees grow 0.025-0.250 mm/h. Some climbing species, such as kudzu, which do not need to produce thick supportive tissue, may grow up to 12.5 mm/h.

Immune system

By means of cells that behave like nerves, Plants receive and distribute within their systems information about incident light intensity and quality. Incident light which stimulates a chemical reaction in one leaf, will cause a chain reaction of signals to the entire plant via a type of cell termed a "bundle sheath cell". Researchers from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, found that Plants have a specific memory for varying light conditions which prepares their immune systems against seasonal pathogens.

Internal distribution

Vascular Plants differ from other Plants in that they transport nutrients between different parts through specialized structures, called xylem and phloem. They also have roots for taking up water and minerals. The xylem moves water and minerals from the root to the rest of the plant, and the phloem provides the roots with sugars and other nutrient produced by the leaves.

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Organism

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Organism

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Organism

Organizational terminology

All Organism are classified by the science of alpha taxonomy into either taxa or clades.

Taxa are ranked groups of organisms, which run from the general (Domain) to the specific (Species). A broad scheme of ranks in hierarchical order is:

1. Life

2. Domain

3. Kingdom

4. Phylum

5. Class

6. Order

7. Family

8. Genus

9. Species

To give an example, Homo sapiens is the Latin binomial equating to modern humans. All members of the species sapiens are, at least in theory, genetically able to interbreed. Several species may belong to a genus, but the members of different species within a genus are unable to interbreed to produce fertile offspring. Homo, however, only has one surviving species (sapiens), Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, etc. having become extinct thousands of years ago. Several genera belong to the same family and so on up the hierarchy. Eventually, the relevant kingdom (Animalia, in the case of humans) is placed into one of the three domains depending upon certain genetic and structural characteristics.

All living organisms known to science are given classification by this system such that the species within a particular Family are more closely related and genetically similar than the species within a particular Phylum.

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Life

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Life

Life (cf. biota) is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes (biology) from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased (death), or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate.

In biology, the science of living Organisms, Life is the condition which distinguishes active organisms from inorganic matter. Living organisms undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, possess a capacity to grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce and, through natural selection, adapt to their environment in successive generations. More complex living organisms can communicate through various means. A diverse array of living organisms (Life forms) can be found in the biosphere on Earth, and the properties common to these organisms—plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria—are a carbon- and water-based cellular form with complex organization and heritable genetic information.

In philosophy and religion, the conception of Life and its nature varies. Both offer interpretations as to how Life relates to existence and consciousness, and both touch on many related issues, including Life stance, purpose, conception of a god or gods, a soul or an afterLife.

Early theories about life

Some of the earliest theories of Life were materialist, holding that all that exists is matter, and that all Life is merely a complex form or arrangement of matter. Empedocles (430 BC) argued that every thing in the universe is made up of a combination of four eternal "elements" or "roots of all": earth, water, air, and fire. All change is explained by the arrangement and rearrangement of these four elements. The various forms of Life are caused by an appropriate mixture of elements. For example, growth in plants is explained by the natural downward movement of earth and the natural upward movement of fire.

Democritus (460 BC), the disciple of Leucippus, thought that the essential characteristic of Life is having a soul (psyche). In common with other ancient writers, he used the term to mean the principle of living things that causes them to function as a living thing. He thought the soul was composed of fire atoms, because of the apparent connection between Life and heat, and because fire moves. He also suggested that humans originally lived like animals, gradually developing communities to help one another, originating language, and developing crafts and agriculture.

In the scientific revolution of the 17th century, mechanistic ideas were revived by philosophers like Descartes.

Definitions

It is still a challenge for scientists and philosophers to define Life in unequivocal terms. Defining Life is difficult—in part—because Life is a process, not a pure substance. Any definition must be sufficiently broad to encompass all Life with which we are familiar, and it should be sufficiently general that, with it, scientists would not miss Life that may be fundamentally different from earthly Life.

Biology

Since there is no unequivocal definition of Life, the current understanding is descriptive, where Life is a characteristic of organisms that exhibit all or most of the following phenomena:

1. Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
2. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of Life.
3. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with Life.
4. Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
5. Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
6. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and by chemotaxis.
7. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

Biophysics

Biophysicists have also commented on the nature and qualities of Life forms—notably that they function on negative entropy. In more detail, according to physicists such as John Bernal, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, and John Avery, Life is a member of the class of phenomena which are open or continuous systems able to decrease their internal entropy at the expense of substances or free energy taken in from the environment and subsequently rejected in a degraded form (see: entropy and Life).

Gaia hypothesis

The idea that the Earth is alive is probably as old as humankind, but the first public expression of it as a fact of science was by a Scottish scientist, James Hutton. In 1785 he stated that the Earth was a superorganism and that its proper study should be physiology. Hutton is rightly remembered as the father of geology, but his idea of a living Earth was forgotten in the intense reductionism of the 19th century. The Gaia hypothesis, originally proposed in the 1960s by scientist James Lovelock, explores the idea that the Life on Earth functions as a single organism which actually defines and maintains environmental conditions necessary for its survival.

Life as a property of ecosystems

A systems view of Life treats environmental fluxes and biological fluxes together as a "reciprocity of influence", and a reciprocal relation with environment is arguably as important for understanding Life as it is for understanding ecosystems. As Harold J. Morowitz (1992) explains it, Life is a property of an ecological system rather than a single organism or species. He argues that an ecosystemic definition of Life is preferable to a strictly biochemical or physical one. Robert Ulanowicz (2009) also highlights mutualism as the key to understand the systemic, order-generating behavior of Life and ecosystems.

Extinction

Extinction is the gradual process by which a group of taxa or species dies out, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively after a period of apparent absence. Species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing habitat or against superior competition. Over the history of the Earth, over 99% of all the species that have ever lived have gone extinct, however, mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.


See : Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species

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Domain

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Domain

In biological taxonomy, a Domain (also superregnum, superkingdom, or empire) is the highest taxonomic rank of organisms, higher than a kingdom. According to the three-domain system of Carl Woese, introduced in 1990, the Tree of Life consists of three domains: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya. The arrangement of taxa reflects the fundamental differences in the genomes. There are some alternative classifications of life:

* The two-empire system or superdomain system, with top-level groupings of Prokaryota (or Monera), Eukaryota and the more recently discovered Archaea empires.
* The six-kingdom system with top-level groupings of Eubacteria, Archaebacteria, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, and Animalia.
* The three-empire system (Eubacteria, Archaea, Eukarya) with 5 Supergroups in the Eukarya

None of the three systems currently include non-cellular life.

See : Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species

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Kingdom

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Kingdom

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Kingdom

In biology, Kingdom (Latin: regnum, pl. regna) is a taxonomic rank, which is either the highest rank or in the more recent three-domain system, the rank below domain. Kingdoms are divided into smaller groups called phyla (in zoology) or divisions in botany. The complete sequence of ranks is Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

Currently, textbooks from the United States use a system of six Kingdoms (Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, Archaea, Bacteria) while British, Australian and Latin American textbooks may describe five Kingdoms (Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Prokaryota or Monera).

Historically, the number of Kingdoms in widely accepted classifications has grown from two to six. However, phylogenetic research from about 2000 onwards does not support any of the traditional systems.

Two kingdoms

The classification of living things into animals and plants is an ancient one. Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC) classified animal species in his work the History of Animals, and his pupil Theophrastus (c. 371–c. 287 BC) wrote a parallel work on plants (the History of Plants).

Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) laid the foundations for modern biological nomenclature, now regulated by the Nomenclature Codes. He distinguished two Kingdoms of living things: Regnum Animale ('animal Kingdom') for animals and Regnum Vegetabile ('vegetable Kingdom') for plants. (Linnaeus also included minerals, placing them in a third Kingdom, Regnum Lapideum.) Linnaeus divided each Kingdom into classes, later grouped into phyla for animals and divisions for plants.

Three kingdoms

In 1674, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, often called the "father of microscopy", sent the Royal Society of London a copy of his first observations of microscopic single-celled organisms. Up to this time, the existence of such microscopic organisms was entirely unknown. At first these organisms were divided into animals and plants and placed in the appropriate Kingdom. However, by the mid-19th century it had become clear that "the existing dichotomy of the plant and animal Kingdoms rapidly blurred at its boundaries and outmoded". In 1866, following earlier proposals by Richard Owen and John Hogg, Ernst Haeckel proposed a third Kingdom of life. Haeckel revised the content of this Kingdom a number of times before settling on a division based on whether organisms were unicellular (Protista) or multicellular (animals and plants).

Four kingdoms

The development of microscopy, and the electron microscope in particular, revealed an important distinction between those unicellular organisms whose cells do not have a distinct nucleus, prokaryotes, and those unicellular and multicellular organisms whose cells do have a distinct nucleus, eukaryotes. In 1938, Herbert F. Copeland proposed a four-Kingdom classification, moving the two prokaryotic groups, bacteria and "blue-green algae", into a separate Kingdom Monera.

It gradually became apparent how important the prokaryote/eukaryote distinction is, and Stanier and van Niel popularized Édouard Chatton's proposal in the 1960s to recognize this division in a formal classification. This required the creation, for the first time, of a rank above Kingdom, a superkingdom or empire, also called a domain.

Five kingdoms

The differences between fungi and other organisms regarded as plants had long been recognized. For example, at one point Haeckel moved the fungi out of Plantae into Protista, before changing his mind. Robert Whittaker recognized an additional Kingdom for the Fungi. The resulting five-Kingdom system, proposed in 1969 by Whittaker, has become a popular standard and with some refinement is still used in many works and forms the basis for newer multi-Kingdom systems. It is based mainly on differences in nutrition; his Plantae were mostly multicellular autotrophs, his Animalia multicellular heterotrophs, and his Fungi multicellular saprotrophs. The remaining two Kingdoms, Protista and Monera, included unicellular and simple cellular colonies. The five Kingdom system may be combined with the two empire system.

Six kingdoms

From around the mid-1970s onwards, there was an increasing emphasis on molecular level comparisons of genes (initially ribosomal RNA genes) as the primary factor in classification; genetic similarity was stressed over outward appearances and behavior. Taxonomic ranks, including Kingdoms, were to be groups of organisms with a common ancestor, whether monophyletic (all descendants of a common ancestor) or paraphyletic (only some descendants of a common ancestor). Based on such RNA studies, Carl Woese divided the prokaryotes (Kingdom Monera) into two groups, called Eubacteria and Archaebacteria, stressing that there was as much genetic difference between these two groups as between either of them and all eukaryotes. Eukaryote groups, such as plants, fungi and animals may look different, but are more similar to each other in their genetic makeup at the molecular level than they are to either the Eubacteria or Archaebacteria. (It was also found that the eukaryotes are more closely related, genetically, to the Archaebacteria than they are to the Eubacteria.) Although the primacy of the eubacteria-archaebacteria divide has been questioned, it has also been upheld by subsequent research.

Woese attempted to establish a "three primary Kingdom" or "urkingdom" system. In 1990, the name "domain" was proposed for the highest rank. The six-Kingdom system shown below represents a blending of the classic five-Kingdom system and Woese's three-domain system. Such six-Kingdom systems have become standard in many works.

Woese also recognized that the Protista Kingdom was not a monophyletic group and might be further divided at the level of Kingdom.

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Phylum

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Phylum

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Phylum

In biology, a phylum (plural: phyla) is a taxonomic rank below Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species and above Class. "Phylum" is equivalent to the botanical term division. Phylum is one of the major biological divisions called Taxa. The Kingdom Animalia contains approximately forty phyla. The relationships among phyla are becoming increasingly well known, and larger clades can be found to contain many of the phyla.

General description and familiar examples

Informally, phyla can be thought of as grouping organisms based on general body plan, as well as developmental or internal organizations. For example, though seemingly divergent, spiders and crabs both belong to Arthropoda, whereas earthworms and tapeworms, similar in shape, are from Annelida and Platyhelminthes, respectively. Although the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature allows the use of the term "Phylum" in reference to plants, the term "Division" is almost always used by botanists.

The best known animal phyla are the Mollusca, Porifera, Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Arthropoda, Echinodermata, and Chordata, the Phylum to which humans belong, along with all other vertebrate species, as well as some invertebrates such as the lamprey. Although there are 36 animal phyla, these nine include over 96% of animal species. Many phyla are exclusively marine, and only one Phylum, the Onychophora (velvet worms) is entirely absent from the world's oceans—although ancestral onycophorans were marine.

Defining a phylum

At the most basic level, a Phylum can be defined in two ways: as a group of organisms with a certain degree of morphological or developmental similarity (the phenetic definition), or a group of organisms with a certain degree of evolutionary relatedness (the phylogenetic definition). Attempting to define a level of the Linnean hierarchy without referring to (evolutionary) relatedness is an unsatisfactory approach, but the phenetic definition is more useful when addressing questions of a morphological nature—such as how successful different body plans were.

Definition based on genetic relation

The largest objective measure in the above definitions is the "certain degree"—how unrelated do organisms need to be to be members of different phyla? The minimal requirement is that all organisms in a Phylum should be related closely enough for them to be clearly more closely related to one another than to any other group. However, even this is problematic, as the requirement depends on our current knowledge about organisms' relationships: As more data becomes available, particularly from molecular studies, we are better able to judge the relationships between groups. So phyla can be merged or split if it becomes apparent that they are related to one another or not; for example, since the onychophora and the tardigrada have now been accepted as stem groups of the arthropods, these three phyla should be combined.

This changeability of phyla has led some biologists to call for the concept of a Phylum to be abandoned in favour of cladistics, a method in which groups are placed on a "family tree" without any formal ranking of group size. So as to provide a handle on the size and significance of groups, a "body-plan" based definition of a Phylum has been proposed by paleontologists Graham Budd and Sören Jensen. The definition was posited by paleontologists because it is extinct organisms that are typically hardest to classify, because they can be extinct off-shoots that diverged from a Phylum's history before the characters that define the modern Phylum were all acquired.

Definition based on body plan

By Budd and Jensen's definition, phyla are defined by a set of characters shared by all their living representatives. This has a couple of small problems—for instance, characters common to most members of a Phylum may be secondarily lost by some members. It is also defined based on an arbitrary point of time (the present). However, as it is character based, it is easy to apply to the fossil record. A more major problem is that it relies on an objective decision of which group of organisms should be considered a Phylum.

Its utility is that it makes it easy to classify extinct organisms as "stem groups" to the phyla with which they bear the most resemblance, based only on the taxonomically important similarities. However, proving that a fossil belongs to the crown group of a Phylum is difficult, as it must display a character unique to a sub-set of the crown group. Further, organisms in the stem group to a Phylum can bear all the aspects of the "body plan" of the Phylum without all the characters necessary to fall within it. This weakens the idea that each of the phyla represents a distinct body plan.

Based upon this definition, which some say is unreasonably affected by the chance survival of rare groups, which vastly increase the size of phyla, representatives of many modern phyla did not appear until long after the Cambrian.

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