In general taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek τάξις, taxis and νόμος, nomos ('law' or 'science'). Taxonomy uses taxonomic units, known as taxa (singular taxon), it is a kind of wastebasket taxon, either a taxon that is not a natural (monophyletic In common cladistic usage, a monophyletic group is a taxon which forms a clade, meaning that it consists of an ancestor and all its descendants. The term is synonymous with the uncommon term holophyly. It is contrasted with the terms paraphyly, which is a taxon consisting of an ancestor and some of its descendants, and polyphyly, which is a taxon) group but united by shared plesiomorphies Cladistics is a form of biological systematics that classifies organisms into hierarchical monophyletic groups. It can be distinguished from other taxonomic systems, such as phenetics, by its focus on shared derived characters (synapomorphies). Previous systems usually employed overall morphological similarity to group species into genera,, or a presumably artificial group of organisms whose true relationships are not known, being obscured by ecomorphological similarity. Well-known form taxa of this kind include "ducks Duck is the common name for a number of species in the Anatidae family of birds. The ducks are divided between several subfamilies listed in full in the Anatidae article; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered ducks. Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, mostly smaller than the swans and", "fish A fish is any aquatic vertebrate animal that is covered with scales, and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins. Most fish are ectothermic . Fish are abundant in most bodies of water. Fish are found in high mountain streams (e.g., char and gudgeon) and in the deepest ocean depths (e.g., gulpers and anglerfish)", "reptiles Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, generally "cold-blooded" (poikilothermic) amniotes whose skin is usually covered in scales or scutes. They are tetrapods (either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors) and lay amniotic eggs, in which the embryo is surrounded by a membrane called the" and "worms The term worm refers to an obsolete taxon used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals. Currently it is used to describe many different distantly-related animals which have a long cylindrical body and no legs".
In paleobotany Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany , is the branch of paleontology or paleobiology dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments, and the evolution of both the plant kingdom and life in general. A synonym is paleophytology, the term is occasionally substituted for the more correct term "organ taxon", meaning a group of fossils of a particular part of a plant, such as a leaf or seed, whose parent plant is not known because the fossils were preserved unattached to the parent plant.[1]
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Gee et al. (2003) 1133–1149
References
- Gee, Carole T.; Sander, P. Martin & Petzelberger, Bianka E.M. (2003): "A Miocene rodent nut cache in coastal dunes of the Lower Rhine Embayment, Germany." Palaeontology 46(6) doi The Digital Object Identifier System is a managed system for persistent identification of content-related entities on digital networks. These entities may be content items (digital files, physical objects, abstract works), or any related entities in a content transaction (e.g. licenses, parties, etc.). "DOI" is sometimes used to mean the:10.1046/j.0031-0239.2003.00337.x
Categories: Scientific classification | Taxonomy Taxonomy may refer to either a hierarchical classification of things, or the principles underlying the classification, it is principally used in the context of biology to refer to scientific classification
