BJU Press Biology Chapter 11--Taxonomy

taxonomy

the science of classifying organisms

taxa/taxon

eight classification groups

the Domains of Life

archaea, bacteria, chromista, protozoa, fungi, plantae, animalia

binomial nomenclature

the system in which an organism would be assigned a genus name and a species name (in Latin)

scientific name

the genus-species name of an organism

systematics

the science of classification

phylogeny

deals with constructing the evolutionary history of organisms

cladistics

the reclassifying of organisms according to their evolutionary theory

clades

branches of a phylogenetic tree that include all the descendants of an evolutionary ancestor

divergence

the process of two similar species becoming more and more different

derived trait

a trait that arises within a clade and is shared by all future members of that clade

convergence

the process of two dissimilar species evolving the same derived trait