Diversity in the Living World 

Diversity in the world can be experienced everywhere on the earth. Each different kind of plant, animal, or organism that you see represents a species. The number of species that are known and described ranges from 1.71.7 to 1.81.8 million, which is referred to as biodiversity. Every individual is unique with respect to structure, body functions, genetic make-up, etc

Living organisms inhabiting different habitats have different structural organs or functions developed according to the conditions of the habitat. The warm and humid regions of the earth have diverse organisms and thus are known as the region of mega biodiversity.

Terminology utilized as a part of classification includes Nomenclature, Classification, Taxonomy and Systematics.

The process of naming an organism is known as nomenclature. A principle and criterion were given for naming the organisms, by scientists known as International Code for Botanical nomenclature (ICBN). For animals, International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. This helps scientists from all over the world to interact with each other using the same name.

Each name consists of two parts the first part is the generic name and the second part is the name of the species. This is known as Binomial Nomenclature. This was given by a scientist known as Carolus Linnaeus. 

Examples: Mangifera Indica (Mango); Homo sapiens (Man)

In this case, Mangifera and Homo are the generic names; indica and sapiens are specific epithets.

Rules of Nomenclature:

  • Each biological name has two words-The principal word speaks about the genus and the second speaks to the specific epithet.
  • The expressions of the name ought to be independently underlined when manually written and ought to be in italics when printed.
  • The generic name ought to begin with a capital letter and the specific epithet ought to begin with a little letter.
  • The names ought to be either Latin or Latinized.

Classification: It is the process of assigning creatures to particular groups or classes taking into account some defined characters. These classes are called Taxa (sing. taxon)

Taxonomy: It is the investigation of identification, nomenclature and arrangement of life forms taking into account outer and inside the structure with cell structure, advancement process and biological data.

 systematics: It is the investigation of life forms with reference to identification, nomenclature, arrangement and evolutionary correspondence.