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

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

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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Class

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Class

In biological classification, class (Latin: classis) is

* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, with class fitting between phylum and order. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the prefix sub-: subclass (Latin: subclassis).
* a taxonomic unit, a taxon, in that rank. In that case the plural is classes (Latin classes)

The composition of each class is determined by a taxonomist. Often there is no exact agreement, with different taxonomists taking different positions. There are no hard rules that a taxonomist needs to follow in describing a class, but for well-known animals there is likely to be consensus. For example, dogs are usually assigned to the phylum Chordata (animals with notochords); in the class Mammalia; in the order Carnivora (mammals that eat meat).

History of the concept

The class as a distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name (and not just called a top-level genus (genus summum) was first introduced by a French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort in his classification of plants (appeared in his 1694 Eléments de botanique). Carolus Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently, in dividing of all three of his kingdoms of Nature (minerals, plants, and animals) in his Systema Naturae (1735, 1st ed.). Since then class had been considered the highest level of the taxonomic hierarchy until the embranchements, now called phyla, and divisions were introduced in the nineteenth century.

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Order

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Order

In scientific classification used in biology, the order (Latin: ordo) is

1. a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, with order fitting in between class and family. An immediately higher rank, superorder, may be added directly above order, while suborder would be a lower rank.
2. a taxonomic unit, a taxon, in that rank. In that case the plural is orders (Latin ordines).

Example: Walnuts and hickories belong to the Juglandaceae, or walnut family, which is placed in the order Fagales.

What does and does not belong to each order is determined by a taxonomist. Similarly for the question if a particular order should be recognized at all. Often there is no exact agreement, with different taxonomists each taking a different position. There are no hard rules that a taxonomist needs to follow in describing or recognizing an order. Some taxa are accepted almost universally, while others are recognised only rarely.

For some groups of organisms, consistent suffixes are used to denote that the rank is an order. The Latin suffix -(i)formes meaning "having the form of" is used for the scientific name of orders of birds and fishes, but not for those of mammals and invertebrates. The suffix -ales is for the name of orders of vascular plants.

History of the concept

The order as a distinct rank of biological classification having its own distinctive name (and not just called a higher genus (genus summum)) was first introduced by a German botanist Augustus Quirinus Rivinus in his classification of plants (appeared in a series of treatises in the 1690s). Carolus Linnaeus was the first to apply it consistently to the division of all three kingdoms of Nature (minerals, plants, and animals) in his Systema Naturae (1735, 1st. Ed.).

Botany

For plants the Linnaean orders, in the Systema Naturae and the Species Plantarum, were strictly artificial, introduced to subdivide the artificial classes into more comprehensible smaller groups. When the word ordo was first consistently used for natural units of plants, in nineteenth century works such as the Prodromus of de Candolle and the Genera Plantarum of Bentham & Hooker, it indicated taxa that are now given the rank of family (see ordo naturalis).

In French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763) and until the end of the 19th century, the word famille (plural: familles) was used as a French equivalent for this Latin ordo. This equivalence was explicitly stated in the Alphonse De Candolle's Lois de la nomenclature botanique (1868), the precursor of the currently used International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

In the first international Rules of botanical nomenclature of 1906 the word family (familia) was assigned to the rank indicated by the French "famille", while order (ordo) was reserved for a higher rank, for what in the nineteenth century had often been named a cohors (plural cohortes).

Some of the plant families still retain the names of Linnaean "natural orders" or even the names of pre-Linnaean natural groups recognised by Linnaeus as orders in his natural classification (e.g. Palmae or Labiatae). Such names are known as descriptive family names.

Zoology

In zoology, the Linnaean orders were used more consistently. That is, the orders in the zoology part of the Systema Naturae refer to natural groups. Some of his ordinal names are still in use (e.g. Lepidoptera for the order of moths and butterflies, or Diptera for the order of flies, mosquitoes, midges, and gnats).

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Family

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Family

In biological classification, family (Latin: familia) is

* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are Life, Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the prefix sub-: subfamily (Latin: subfamilia).
* a taxonomic unit, a taxon, in that rank. In that case the plural is families (Latin familiae)

Example: Walnuts and hickories belong to the Juglandaceae, or walnut family.

What does and does not belong to each family is determined by a taxonomist. Similarly for the question if a particular family should be recognized at all. Often there is no exact agreement, with different taxonomists each taking a different position. There are no hard rules that a taxonomist needs to follow in describing or recognizing a family. Some taxa are accepted almost universally, while others are recognised only rarely.

History of the concept

Family, as a rank intermediate between order and genus, is a relatively recent invention.

The taxonomic term familia was first used by French botanist Pierre Magnol in his Prodromus historiae generalis plantarum, in quo familiae plantarum per tabulas disponuntur (1689) where he called the seventy-six groups of plants he recognised in his tables families (familiae). The concept of rank at that time was not yet settled, and in the preface to the Prodromus Magnol spoke of uniting his families into larger genera, which is far from how the term is used today.

Carolus Linnaeus used the word familia in his Philosophia botanica (1751) to denote major groups of plants: trees, herbs, ferns, palms, and so on. He used this term only in the morphological section of the book, discussing the vegetative and generative organs of plants. Subsequently, in French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763) and until the end of the 19th century, the word famille was used as a French equivalent of the Latin ordo (or ordo naturalis). In nineteenth century works such as the Prodromus of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and the Genera Plantarum of George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker this word ordo was used for what now is given the rank of family.

In zoology, the family as a rank intermediate between order and genus was introduced by Pierre André Latreille in his Précis des caractères génériques des insectes, disposés dans un ordre naturel (1796). He used families (some of them not named) in some but not in all his orders of "insects" (which then included all arthropods).

Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, the term has been consistently used in its modern sense. Its usage and characteristic ending of the names belonging to this category are governed by the various nomenclature codes. These are "-idae" in the zoological code, and "-aceae" in the botanical and bacteriological codes.

Uses

families may be used for evolutionary and palaeontological studies because they are more stable then lower taxonomic levels such as genera and species.

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Species

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Species

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Species

In biology, a Species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are often used, such as similarity of DNA, morphology or ecological niche. Presence of specific locally adapted traits may further subdivide species into subspecies.

The commonly used names for plant and animal taxa sometimes correspond to species: for example, "lion," "walrus," and "Camphor tree" – each refers to a species. In other cases common names do not: for example, "deer" refers to a Family of 34 species, including Eld's Deer, Red Deer and Elk (Wapiti). The last two species were once considered a single species, illustrating how species boundaries may change with increased scientific knowledge.

Each species is placed within a single Genus. This is a hypothesis that the species is more closely related to other species within its genus than to species of other genera. All species are given a binomial name consisting of the generic name and specific name (or specific epithet). For example, Boa constrictor, which is commonly called by its bionomial name, and is one of five species of the Boa genus.

A usable definition of the word "species" and reliable methods of identifying particular species are essential for stating and testing biological theories and for measuring biodiversity. Traditionally, multiple examples of a proposed species must be studied for unifying characters before it can be regarded as a species. Extinct species known only from fossils are generally difficult to assign precise taxonomic rankings.

Because of the difficulties with both defining and tallying the total numbers of different species in the world, it is estimated that there are anywhere between 2 and 100 million different species.

Biologists' working definition

A usable definition of the word "species" and reliable methods of identifying particular species is essential for stating and testing biological theories and for measuring biodiversity. Traditionally, multiple examples of a proposed species must be studied for unifying characters before it can be regarded as a species. It is generally difficult to give precise taxonomic rankings to extinct species known only from fossils.

Some biologists may view species as statistical phenomena, as opposed to the traditional idea, with a species seen as a class of organisms. In that case, a species is defined as a separately evolving lineage that forms a single gene pool. Although properties such as DNA-sequences and morphology are used to help separate closely related lineages, this definition has fuzzy boundaries. However, the exact definition of the term "species" is still controversial, particularly in prokaryotes, and this is called the species problem. Biologists have proposed a range of more precise definitions, but the definition used is a pragmatic choice that depends on the particularities of the species of concern.

Common names and species

The commonly used names for plant and animal taxa sometimes correspond to species: for example, "lion", "walrus", and "Camphor tree" – each refers to a species. In other cases common names do not: for example, "deer" refers to a family of 34 species, including Eld's Deer, Red Deer and Elk (Wapiti). The last two species were once considered a single species, illustrating how species boundaries may change with increased scientific knowledge.

Because of the difficulties with both defining and tallying the total numbers of different species in the world, it is estimated that there are anywhere between 2 and 100 million different species.

Abbreviated names

Books and articles sometimes intentionally do not identify species fully and use the abbreviation "sp." in the singular or "spp." in the plural in place of the specific epithet: for example, Canis sp. This commonly occurs in the following types of situations:

* The authors are confident that some individuals belong to a particular genus but are not sure to which exact species they belong. This is particularly common in paleontology.

* The authors use "spp." as a short way of saying that something applies to many species within a genus, but do not wish to say that it applies to all species within that genus. If scientists mean that something applies to all species within a genus, they use the genus name without the specific epithet.

In books and articles, genus and species names are usually printed in italics. If using "sp." and "spp.", these should not be italicized.

Definitions of species

The question of how best to define "species" is one that has occupied biologists for centuries, and the debate itself has become known as the species problem. Darwin wrote in chapter II of On the Origin of species:

No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.

But later, in The Descent of Man, when addressing "The question whether mankind consists of one or several species", Darwin revised his opinion to say:

it is a hopeless endeavour to decide this point on sound grounds, until some definition of the term "species" is generally accepted; and the definition must not include an element that cannot possibly be ascertained, such as an act of creation.

The modern theory of evolution depends on a fundamental redefinition of "species". Prior to Darwin, naturalists viewed species as ideal or general types, which could be exemplified by an ideal specimen bearing all the traits general to the species. Darwin's theories shifted attention from uniformity to variation and from the general to the particular. According to intellectual historian Louis Menand,

Once our attention is redirected to the individual, we need another way of making generalizations. We are no longer interested in the conformity of an individual to an ideal type; we are now interested in the relation of an individual to the other individuals with which it interacts. To generalize about groups of interacting individuals, we need to drop the language of types and essences, which is prescriptive (telling us what finches should be), and adopt the language of statistics and probability, which is predictive (telling us what the average finch, under specified conditions, is likely to do). Relations will be more important than categories; functions, which are variable, will be more important than purposes; transitions will be more important than boundaries; sequences will be more important than hierarchies.

This shift results in a new approach to "species"; Darwin

concluded that species are what they appear to be: ideas, which are provisionally useful for naming groups of interacting individuals. "I look at the term species", he wrote, "as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other ... It does not essentially differ from the word variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for convenience sake."

Practically, biologists define species as populations of organisms that have a high level of genetic similarity. This may reflect an adaptation to the same niche, and the transfer of genetic material from one individual to others, through a variety of possible means. The exact level of similarity used in such a definition is arbitrary, but this is the most common definition used for organisms that reproduce asexually (asexual reproduction), such as some plants and microorganisms.

This lack of any clear species concept in microbiology has led to some authors arguing that the term "species" is not useful when studying bacterial evolution. Instead they see genes as moving freely between even distantly related bacteria, with the entire bacterial domain being a single gene pool. Nevertheless, a kind of rule of thumb has been established, saying that species of Bacteria or Archaea with 16S rRNA gene sequences more similar than 97% to each other need to be checked by DNA-DNA Hybridization if they belong to the same species or not. This concept has been updated recently, saying that the border of 97% was too low and can be raised to 98.7%.

In the study of sexually reproducing organisms, where genetic material is shared through the process of reproduction, the ability of two organisms to interbreed and produce fertile offspring of both sexes is generally accepted as a simple indicator that the organisms share enough genes to be considered members of the same species. Thus a "species" is a group of interbreeding organisms.

This definition can be extended to say that a species is a group of organisms that could potentially interbreed – fish could still be classed as the same species even if they live in different lakes, as long as they could still interbreed were they ever to come into contact with each other. On the other hand, there are many examples of series of three or more distinct populations, where individuals of the population in the middle can interbreed with the populations to either side, but individuals of the populations on either side cannot interbreed. Thus, one could argue that these populations constitute a single species, or two distinct species. This is not a paradox; it is evidence that species are defined by gene frequencies, and thus have fuzzy boundaries.

Consequently, any single, universal definition of "species" is necessarily arbitrary. Instead, biologists have proposed a range of definitions; which definition a biologists uses is a pragmatic choice, depending on the particularities of that biologist's research.



Biological / Isolation species

A set of actually or potentially interbreeding populations. This is generally a useful formulation for scientists working with living examples of the higher taxa like mammals, fish, and birds, but more problematic for organisms that do not reproduce sexually. The results of breeding experiments done in artificial conditions may or may not reflect what would happen if the same organisms encountered each other in the wild, making it difficult to gauge whether or not the results of such experiments are meaningful in reference to natural populations.


Evolutionary / Darwinian species

A group of organisms that shares an ancestor; a lineage that maintains its integrity with respect to other lineages through both time and space. At some point in the progress of such a group, some members may diverge from the main population and evolve into a subspecies, a process that eventually will lead to the formation of a new full species if isolation (geographical or ecological) is maintained.

Importance in biological classification

The idea of species has a long history. It is one of the most important levels of classification, for several reasons:

* It often corresponds to what lay people treat as the different basic kinds of organism – dogs are one species, cats another.
* It is the standard binomial nomenclature (or trinomial nomenclature) by which scientists typically refer to organisms.
* It is the highest taxonomic level that cannot be made more or less inclusionary.

After years of use, the concept remains central to biology and a host of related fields, and yet also remains at times ill-defined.

Implications of assignment of species status

The naming of a particular species may be regarded as a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. Sometimes, especially in the past when communication was more difficult, taxonomists working in isolation have given two distinct names to individual organisms later identified as the same species. When two named species are discovered to be of the same species, the older species name is usually retained, and the newer species name dropped, a process called synonymization, or colloquially, as lumping. Dividing a taxon into multiple, often new, taxons is called splitting. Taxonomists are often referred to as "lumpers" or "splitters" by their colleagues, depending on their personal approach to recognizing differences or commonalities between organisms (see lumpers and splitters).

Traditionally, researchers relied on observations of anatomical differences, and on observations of whether different populations were able to interbreed successfully, to distinguish species; both anatomy and breeding behavior are still important to assigning species status. As a result of the revolutionary (and still ongoing) advance in microbiological research techniques, including DNA analysis, in the last few decades, a great deal of additional knowledge about the differences and similarities between species has become available. Many populations formerly regarded as separate species are now considered a single taxon, and many formerly grouped populations have been split. Any taxonomic level (species, genus, family, etc.) can be synonymized or split, and at higher taxonomic levels, these revisions have been still more profound.

From a taxonomical point of view, groups within a species can be defined as being of a taxon hierarchically lower than a species. In zoology only the subspecies is used, while in botany the variety, subvariety, and form are used as well. In conservation biology, the concept of evolutionary significant units (ESU) is used, which may be define either species or smaller distinct population segments. Identifying and naming species is the providence of alpha taxonomy.

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