{"id":253,"date":"2016-01-27T15:07:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T15:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.efolio.soton.ac.uk\/blog\/discoveroceanography\/?page_id=253"},"modified":"2019-06-08T12:29:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-08T11:29:44","slug":"marin-identification","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/discoveroceanography\/for-teachers\/workbook-2\/marin-identification\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine identification"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once flora and fauna have been collected, the haul must then be identified.<\/p>\n

Taxonomy<\/strong>
\n\"\"Species<\/span> must be named for us to be able to talk about them and write about them. If everyone was allowed to name a new Species<\/span> whatever they liked when they liked the whole system would be chaos. Which is exactly what happened in the scientific community before Carolus Linnaeus invented binomial nomenclature in 1758.<\/p>\n

Binomial nomenclature<\/strong><\/p>\n

This system gives every Species<\/span> two names: a genus<\/em> and a\u00a0Species<\/span><\/em> name.\u00a0 A Genus is a group of closely related Species<\/span>.\u00a0This is similar to your first and surname. Your first name e.g. \u00a0John is your Species<\/span> name and your surname e.g. \u00a0Smith is the genus you belong to in this example your family.<\/p>\n

For example take 3 siblings:<\/p>\n

George<\/p>\n

Nicola \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Westminster<\/p>\n

Denis<\/p>\n

They all have the same surname as they are in the same household, making them closely related, so you could say they are in the same genus.<\/p>\n

There are rules about how you spell scientific names as well. The genus is always capitalised and the Species<\/span> name is always lower case. The genus and Species<\/span> names are always written in Italics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Take human beings for example:<\/p>\n

Human beings are\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Homo\u00a0<\/em>(Genus) \u00a0sapiens <\/em>(Species<\/span>)<\/p>\n

This is the very bottom of the classification system, and the section you will be most familiar with. Genera<\/strong>\u00a0are further grouped into Families<\/strong>, Families are further grouped into Orders<\/strong>, which are grouped into Classes<\/strong>. These are placed in Phylums<\/strong>, <\/em>that belong to one of the three Kingdoms<\/strong> \u2013 Plantae, Fungi and Animalia.<\/p>\n

The system goes like this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Kingdom<\/li>\n
  2. Phylum<\/li>\n
  3. Class\"\"<\/li>\n
  4. Order<\/li>\n
  5. Family<\/li>\n
  6. Genus<\/li>\n
  7. Species<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Let\u2019s look at the classification for Human beings Homo sapiens<\/em>, and compare it to that of a Blue Whale<\/p>\n\n

    Try it for yourself and complete the classification for a starfish:<\/p>\n