Brooklyn College BIOL 1010 : Lab Notes
Paths of Evolution
Binomial names
- This is the two-word naming system developed by Carolus Linnaeus to identify plants and animals.
A binomial name (or scientific name) is always written in italics or underlined, with the Genus capitalized.
For example: your pet cat's binomial name is Felis catus
Why use binomial names?
As you probably know there are many different languages in the world. Over 90 different languages are spoken in Brooklyn, N.Y. alone. Scientific names are just another language.
For a long time scientists faced the problem that one species of plant or animal might have many different names according to which language you spoke. You can imagine that this caused all sorts of problems when scientists got together to talk about their research. They might all be talking about the same plant but using different names, very confusing. Carl Linnaeus (a Swedish biologist) decided in 1758 that everybody should be using the same name to describe the same species and proposed a universal naming system for all creatures.
Lets add what we know about phylogentic trees to binomial names:
Below is a phylogentic tree of different animals (starting from the general catagory of Eukarotes and gradually becoming more specific as we follow the tree down to the species level)
From our tree, we can determine the relation between these animals. In other words, we can see which animals are more closely related.
Lets compare some animals:
Which animals are more closely related:
- From our tree we can see that humans and gorillas are more closely related because they both from the Order: Primate.
Dogs are from the Order: Carnivora
Now which of these are more closely related:
- Again we can see that dogs and wolves are more closely related because they are both from the Genus: Canis.
Cats and tigers are from two different Genera.