• Triple crown of biology – crafoord prize balzan prize and international prize in biology.
• Ernst Mayr – Darwin of 20th century. One of the 1oo greatest scientists of all time.
• He pioneered the current accepted definition of a biological species.
• In plants indefinitive growth. Animals have deifinitive growth i.e. only up to a certain age.
• Photoperiod affects reproduction in seasonal breeders, both plants and animals.
• While metabolism is a defining feature of all living organisms without exception, isolated metabolic reactions in vitro are not living things but surely living reactions.
• Human being is the only organism who is aware of himself, i.e., has self-consciousness.
• Biology is the story of life on earth. Biology is the story of evolution of living organisms on earth. All living organisms – present, past and future, are linked to one another by the sharing of the common genetic material, but to varying degrees.
• The number of species that are known and described range between 1.7-1.8 million. This refers to biodiversity or the number and types of organisms present on earth. We should remember here that as we explore new areas, and even old ones, new organisms are continuously being identified.
• External and internal structure, along with the structure of cell, development process and ecological information of organisms are essential and form the basis of modern taxonomic studies.
• Characterization, identification, classification and nomenclature are the processes that are basic to taxonomy.
• The earliest classifications were based on the ‘uses’ of various organisms.
• The word systematics is derived from the Latin word ‘systema’ which means systematic arrangement of organisms. Linnaeus used Systema Naturae as the title of his publication. The scope of systematics was later enlarged to include identification, nomenclature and classification. Systematics takes into account evolutionary relationships between organisms.
• Families are characterised on the basis of both vegetative and reproductive features of plant species. Among plants for example, three different genera Solanum, Petunia and Datura are placed in the family Solanaceae
• Generally, order and other higher taxonomic categories are identified based on the aggregates of characters.
• The collection of actual specimens of plant and animal species is essential and is the prime source of taxonomic studies
• The herbarium sheets also carry a label providing information about date and place of collection, English, local and botanical names, family, collector’s name, etc. Herbaria also serve as quick referral systems in taxonomical studies.
• In botanical garden each plant is labelled indicating its botanical/scientific name and its family.
• Separate taxonomic keys are required for each taxonomic category such as family, genus and species for identification purposes. Keys are generally analytical in nature.
• Flora contains the actual account of habitat and distribution of plants of a given area. These provide the index to the plant species found in a particular area.
• Manuals are useful in providing information for identification of names of species found in an area
• Monographs contain information on any one taxon.
