1. Biodiversity and Classification

2. What is WILDLIFE?

3. What is Biodiversity?
In the world’s ecosystems there exists millions of species of living organisms.
Each species contains it’s own unique genetic blueprint.
Within the species are untold unique individuals.

4. What is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity can be defined as the range of life in an area.
It includes not only the diversity among species but the diversity within a species.
A species is a reproductive community of populations that occupies a specific niche in nature.
i.e. they share DNA with each other and not other species AND they have a particular job in a particular place.

5. So what makes a species, a species?
You need to be able to interbreed (mate with like species successfully). (example: types of dogs)
French Bullhuahua

6. Share a gene pool (genes are common through like species).

7. Reproductively isolated from other species (may be by location, habitat, habits, etc).

8. Create fertile offspring from mating.

9. Liger!

10. There can be difficulties and confusion in classifying what is a separate species.
When a potential new species is identified, it can be difficult to differentiate with previous species.
Eg. Some species of mosquitos are 100% identical from the outside and can only be separated based on their breeding areas.

11. Scientists believe there may be as many as 30 million species of plants, animals and micro-organisms living on the Earth today. Every one of them plays a part in the global ecosystem. Taxonomists have only identified and named approximately 1.7 million of them so far.

12. But classifying organisms is an attempt to make the relatedness between species understood.
We classify many things around us to organize and simplify our lives.
Can you name some examples of classification?

13. Religion
gender
colour
size or shape
social status
year of manufacture
monetary worth, etc

14. Taxonomy:
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species and organizing them into systems of classification.
This system uses binomial nomenclature (two words) for naming organisms.
A two-word Latin name is asigned to each organism

15. Our taxonomic system places similar species into groups and then breaks these into subgroups, sub-subgroups etc.

16. KINGS PLAY CHESS ON FINE GRAINED SAND.
This memory device is to help you remember the taxonomic levels. The first letter of each word represents a group in descending order.

17. smaller Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species
KINGS PLAY CHESS ON FINE GRAINED SAND
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
smaller
Order
Family
Genus
Species

18. Kingdom ANIMALIA CHORDATA Phylum MAMMALIA Class PRIMATES Order
KINGS PLAY CHESS ON FINE GRAINED SAND
Kingdom
ANIMALIA
CHORDATA
Phylum
MAMMALIA
Class
PRIMATES
Order
HOMONIDAE
Family
HOMO
Genus
SAPIENS
Species

19. An organisms scientific name comes it’s last two groupings, genus and species.
Ex. Humans = Homo sapiens
dogs = Canis familiaris
notice that a scientific name is italicized or underlined
genus is capitalized, species name is not

20. most times the species name is descriptive
if 2 species are in the same genus they must be very similar
ex - Ursus americanus
black bear
U. horribilis
grizzly bear
Scientific names are universal

21. Phylogenic Trees
A phylogenetic tree or evolutionary tree is a branching diagram or "tree" showing the imbedded evolutionary relationships among various species based upon similarities and differences in their physical and/or genetic characteristics. The species joined together in the tree are implied to have descended from a common ancestor.

24. Cladogram
Similar in look to a pedigree, a cladogram illustrates ancestral relationships between species but are more modern in the fact that they use DNA similarities to classify and divide.