Taxonomy Essay

The history of taxonomy dates all the way back to the 4th century, where organisms were divided into 2 groups, plants and animals by a Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Early naturalists did not acknowledge that the similarities and differences between the two organisms were results of evolutionary means. So as the years went on, classification gradually changed and slowly became more and more sophisticated.

In 1758, Carlos Linnaeus established the first major break through with classification, and he today is often referred to as the “Father of taxonomy.” (Ben Waggoner.) He developed a hierarchal naming structure that signified species into two names, genus and species and displayed information about what the species was and information about its closest relations. Linnaeus’s system for “naming, ranking, and classifying organisms” (Ben Waggoner) was so greatly accepted into society because of its effectiveness to convey complex relationships between species. It is still in wide use today and has influenced many generations of biologists.

Carlos Linnaeus

After following in Linnaeus’s footsteps the next major discovery in taxonomy was in the 1880’s when Ernist Haeckel suggested a third kingdom. The advances in microscopy and biochemistry led to the discovery of microscopic organisms. It was found that they were unicellular, so they did not fit into either of the multicellular groups; So Haeckel recommended the kingdom Protista to put them in.

In the 1920’s, the discovery that bacteria had a completely different cell structure from other organisms was established. Edouard Chatton recognized that the bacterial cell only...

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... was Felidae and Felis and Lynx are two Genera that fall under this family. They both have “small cat” species within in them but have a range of different animal types. The Felis genus has approximately 7 species and they all have similar appearance, they do not roar and the wild species orientate across Europe, Sothern and central Asia and Africa. Genus Lynx on the other hand only has four members, Bobcat, Canadian Lynx, Eurasian Lynx and Iberian Lynx. Like the Felis, these species live in a variety of different places depending on the type and both genuses have excellent senses and a great ability to pounce on pray. They both eat small rodents like mice, rabbits, squirrel ect. But Felis’s often Supplement their diets with birds and other small animals. Lynx and Felis are very closely related Genus’s and have many distinctions relating them to the Felidae family.