Scientific Names:

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)

Species Plantarum, 1753

Linnaeus ambitiously set out to describe all known plants, animals, and minerals in Species Plantarum. He used polynomials such as the following:

"Nepeta floribus interrupte spicatus peduncularis"

But in doing that, he wrote a single word in the margin which, when combined with the first word of the polynomial, formalized a two-word description, e.g., Nepeta cataria. This gave us a binomial system of nomenclature.

Current System:

Kingdom Fungi

Phylum (Division) Basidiomycota

Class Hymenomycetes

Order Agaricales

Family Agaricaceae

Genus Agaricus

Species bisporus

Problems with common names

I. NATURAL SELECTION

ORGANISMS ARE VARIABLE

SOME VARIATION IS HERITABLE

MORE OFFSPRING ARE PRODUCED THAN CAN SURVIVE

THE OFFSPRING ARE DIFFERENTIALLY ADAPTED

THE BEST ADAPTED SURVIVE TO REPRODUCE (FITNESS IS A MEASURE OF REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS)

II. ARTIFICIAL SELECTION

III. RESPONSES TO PESTICIDES AND ANTIBIOTICS

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"WHAT DRIVES LIFE IS . . . A LITTLE CURRENT, KEPT UP BY THE SUNSHINE."

Animal Kingdom 1,044,000

Insects (750,000), other arthropods (88,000) and mollusks (107,250)

comprise the majority of species.

Plant Kingdom 292,200

flowering plants 250,000

gymnosperms 700

ferns and fern allies 13,000

bryophytes (liverworts & mosses) 16,000

green algae 7,000

brown & red algae 5,500

Fungus Kingdom 130,000

Zygomycota 25,000

Ascomycota 30,000

Basidiomycota 25,000

Fungi Imperfecti 25,000

Lichens 25,000

Protistan Kingdom 30,000

protozoans, plant flagellates,

diatoms, water molds and slime molds

Bacteria (prokaryotic) 2,500 to many times that, probably about 200 species of cyanobacteria although some 7,000 have been described

Archeae (prokaryotic, extremophiles), less than 100 species described.

Total number of described species 1,468,700

Estimates vary among authors and the above would be considered conservative. Remember, too, that these are described species and may represent only a small fraction of the extant species. Most authorities suggest that there are 7 to 10 million species.

It is clear from the table above that species are not equally distributed among the several taxonomic groups. Most of the described species, in fact, are insects and flowering plants. Neither are they distributed equally geographically. A large majority of the species, perhaps two-thirds, are in the tropical regions of the world.

Many organisms have a highly restrictricted geographic distribution. As much as 20 percent of plant species and an even higher proportion of animal species are confined to 0.5 percent of the Earth's surface. Such species are known as endemics and the phenomenon is endemism.