Importance in Biological Classification
The idea of species has a long history. It is one of the most important levels of classification, for several reasons:
- It often corresponds to what lay people treat as the different basic kinds of organism – dogs are one species, cats another.
- It is the standard binomial nomenclature (or trinomial nomenclature) by which scientists typically refer to organisms.
- It is the highest taxonomic level that cannot be made more or less inclusionary.
After years of use, the concept remains central to biology and a host of related fields, and yet also remains at times ill-defined.
Read more about this topic: Species
Famous quotes containing the words importance in, importance and/or biological:
“The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who “come out” together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)