By Sheila Laurin
At the October meeting guest presenter and club member Grant Munroe gave a wonderful talk on the tricky subject of the history of taxonomy. Here is my brief summary of this:
Folk taxonomy began with early people who formed a common naming of plants and animals in their community and used these groupings in everyday business. The country Papua New Guinea has a huge diversity in flora and fauna that has been of interest to taxonomists over the years. Grant, discussed the term “umwelt”, it means an animal or individual’s relationship with its environment. In about 300 BC, Theophrastus in Ancient Greece, wrote the earliest surviving treatise on plants, that classified them mainly by their medicinal effects. Some more medieval texts were used until the 1600s in Europe.
The book that had a huge impact on this science was written by Carl Linnaeus in 1753, called Species Plantarum. It contained a complete list of the plant species known and ordered them for the purpose of easy identification. This formal system of using a two-term naming in Latin continues today and has been standardized internationally by a set of agreed codes and rules. The ICZN (International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) for animals and the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICNafp or ICN).
In the 1800s, while on the voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin studied and classified barnacles extensively and they provided him fascinating insights into evolutionary biology. The taxonomic ranking being used today includes more criteria relating to the behavioral, genetic and biochemical variations of organisms.
Grant also discussed the Birders on Birds mini-book series, published by his company Woodbridge Farm Books, in partnership was Pelee Island Bird Observatory (PIBO). The series includes works by Margaret Atwood and Rodrigo Lopez, who was the guest speaker at our Club’s May members’ meeting.
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