Chapter 18 CLASSIFICATION AND SYSTEMATICSWe have grouped organisms for easier study by comparing similarities and differences.SYSTEMATICS: the study of the diversity of organisms and their comparative and evolutionary relationships. It includes comparative anatomy, comparative biochemistry, comparative physiology, etc.CLASSIFICATION OR TAXONOMY is the ordering of organisms into groups. It includes the principles procedures used in classification.PHYLOGENY: refers to the evolutionary history of a species or group of species in terms of their derivations through evolutionary processes; which species share a common ancestor, which species share a more distant ancestor, etc.Systematics is the study of biological diversity and evolutionary history of organisms.Systematics includes...- Taxonomy, the science of identifying and classifying organisms.- Phylogenetics, the study of the evolutionary history of organisms.- Nomenclature, the system used in naming organisms. Natural selection has shown that all organisms are related to each other genetically. All are part of a large phylogeny.Scientifically valid system of naming plants (nomenclature) should reflect phylogeny, that is, evolutionary relationship.At the end of the XIX Century, scientists began to develop a natural system of classification in which closely related organisms are classified together, and began to assign plant names on the basis of phylogenetic relationship.LEVELS OF TAXONOMIC CATEGORIESThe present system of nomenclature was devised by Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linne), a Swedish botanist who lived in the 18th. Century.Linnaeus published in 1753 a book called Species Plantarum, "the kinds of plants".- Binomial system of nomenclature: Genus + species epithet = scientific name of the plant.- Hierarchical classification: groups within groups. - A taxonomic grouping is called a taxon.- Taxonomy is hierarchical: taxa are grouped into broader taxa.Species are grouped into genera (sing. Genus).- Genera into families; families into orders; orders into classes; classes into divisions; divisions into kingdoms.- There are intermediate taxonomic categories, e.g. superfamily or subspecies.Except for the kingdom, genus and species level, the taxon must have a certain ending to indicate the classification level:- phyta for Division, e.g. Chlorophyta- opsida for Class, e.g. Liliopsida- ales for Order, e.g. Fabales- aceae for Family, e.g. FabaceaeEach family name is named after one of its genera, e.g. Rosaceae after the genus Rosa.Some old names used before the adoption of the new rules of nomenclature have been conserved by convention. These are named nomina conservanda, conserved names.- For example: the daisies and asters family have two names, a conserved old name,Compositae, and a new name according to the modern rules of nomenclature, Asteraceae. Both are equally valid.CLADISTICSA species evolves into two species, as populations accumulate distinct alleles. The two new species usually strongly resemble one another.Reproductive isolation prevents the sharing of new alleles caused by mutations.Plants may resemble one another because…1. They evolved from a common ancestor2. They have undergone convergent evolutionA feature or a trait is called a character.- A character may be a morphological characteristic, e.g. presence of hairs, shape ofshell, etc.- A character may also be a trait at the cellular, biochemical or molecular level, e.g. a particular nucleotide sequence.A character may have several character states, e.g. white or purple flowers, hairs long orshort, A base or C base in particular nucleotide sequence. - Ancestral or plesiomorphic characters are found in the common ancestor of daughter species.o Symplesiomorphic characters are ancestral characters shared by modern clades.- Derived or apomorphic characters have evolved from the ancestral character. o Synapomorphic characters are derived characters found in two or more species and suggest a close common ancestor.Shared derived characters are evidence of evolutionary relationship.The resemblance of plants that result when two distinct evolutionary lines respond to similar environments and selection pressures is called convergent evolution.Taxa may be similar because they share ancestral character states or derived character states, but only the derived character states that are shared among taxa indicate monophyletic groups and enable us to infer phylogeny successfully. See the example on page 416, cacti and succulent euphorbs.Character states that are restricted to a single lineage are sometimes called autapomorphies.- Homology: same feature in different species is derived from a common ancestor, e.g. the forelimb of vertebrates.- Homoplasy: a feature that has evolved two or more time independently of the other and thus does not have a common origin. Homoplasies are also called analogous features or characters.Study the vocabulary on Table 18.3, page 421.Study “Cacti as Examples of Evolutionary Diversification”, pages 422 – 425.Dissimilarities between plants can be difficult to assess. Mutations that affect production, distribution, and sensitivity to hormones result in large changes of the phenotype between two closely related species. Mutations that affect early stages of development such as the embryo or bud meristems can cause closely related species to look deceptively dissimilar.Certain features are considered more significant in evaluating evolutionary relationship. - Features that are the result of complex metabolic interactions and the influence of many genes tend to evolve more slowly than those with simple metabolic controlsby one or two genes.DNA sequencing is a new tool for analyzing evolutionary relationships.DNA sequencing has its own limitations and ambiguities, e.g. how many nucleotide differences are needed to conclude that two genomes represent two distinct species?UNDERSTANDING CLADOGRAMSA cladogram is a diagram that shows evolutionary patterns by means of a series of branches. Each point at which a cladogram branches is called a node and represents the divergence of one taxon into two taxa.All branches that extend from any particular point represent the descendants of the original group, their common ancestor.The ancestor and all the branches derived from it represent a clade.A node represents a detectable change that created the two new groups. See Fig. 18.4.Shared derived characters are evidence of evolutionary relationship.Phylogenetic