SYSTEMATICS

GEOLOGICAL TIME SCALE

Who are the three (3) scientists who contributed to the creation of geological time scale? Give their
complete names.

 William Smith
 Giovanni Arduino
 Nicolas Steno

Eons are the largest slices of time in the geological time scale. Describe each eons according to their time
frame and the things that happened during those times.

 Hadeon Eon
 The earliest Eon
 Named after Hades, the Greek God of the Underworld
 No fossils
 Has super high temperature which can melt a rock and wracked up with volcanic activities and raging
storms.
 Archeon Eon
 Archeon means “origin” in Greek.
 Existed between 4 Billion years ago to 2.5 Billion years ago.
 This is where the cooling marked.
 The atmosphere is mostly Carbon Dioxide
 It was said that life first flourished here.
 Microbes exist in the primordial seas
 Microbes left behind a fossil called “Stromatolites” or “Stromatoliths”
 Proterozoic Eon
 Existed between 2.5 Billion years ago to 541 Million years ago
 Photosynthetic bacteria along with multicellular forms of life existed and formms oxygen throughout the
earth making a path for new and crucial organisms to live, like the ancestral Eukaryotes.
 Phanerozoic Eon
 Existed between 541 Million years ago up to present.
 The eon where it is the home of all living creatures on earth.
 Has 3 Eras:
 Paleozoic Era
 Existed between 541 to 252 Million years ago
 The existence of the Cambrian Explosion where all diversity of the first animals appears.
 25 Million years ago, the complex animals’ remains, like the trilobites, got mineralized.
 Precambrian
 370 Million years ago, primeval continents are formed.
  299 Million years ago, the super continent, Pangaea, formed with an enormous dessert in
the middle.
 The Great Dying
 Almost all of the living creatures disappeared.
 Paleozoic Era ended in a cataclysm.
 Mesozoic Era
 Existed between 252 to 66 Million years ago
 “Age of the Reptiles”
 Ended with the K-Pg Extinction Event, where a giant asteroid crashes Earth creating ashes and
turns the Earth into a vicious cold planet.
 Cenozoic Era
 66 Million years ago until present day.
 Rise of the mammals
 Jungles formed after the extinction event.
 40 Million years ago, some of the mammal group we know had first appear at this time.
 Ice caps grew to Poles taking more water and drier places created a new habitat, the
Grasslands.
 7 Million years ago, this were the first primate, the Sahelanthropus, walked upright.
 Ice caps grew larger creating the “Ice Age” period.
 Life forms thrived
 15,000 years ago, the climate warmed up, the Ice Age ended and the last major glaciation was
over
 Now, modern humans inhabited almost all corners of the globe.

Extinction
Theory of Evolution
Individuals of the same species shows range of variations. Some have better characteristics that are
more suited to their environment making them more likely to survive and reproduce, while others are less well-
adapted. These less well-adapted individuals may fail to reproduce and eventually their genes are removed
from populations. If an entire species fails to adapt to changes in its environment, or compete with other
organisms for resources and its birth rate is lower than its death rate, then IT WILL BECOME EXTINCT.

 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Typically, most organisms become extinct within
ten millions of their first appearance. Although, some survived without much change for much longer.

Living Fossils - Long surviving organisms. Genetically unchanged for millions of years
 Example: African Aardvark and Himalayan Red Panda

Mass Extinction - identified by a significant and often devastating change in the number and variety of
organisms alive at one time.
 Examples:
1. KT Extinction (Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Event)
- the most famous extinction event occurred about 65 million years ago and involved the extinction of the
 dinosaurs.
2. P-Tr Extinction (Permian-Triassic Extinction Event)
- the most devastating extinction that happened 251 million years ago and completely eradicated 96% of
all known species, probably due to a comet or asteroid.

How to slow down Extinction?

 Stopping habitat Destruction (starting point)
 Greener (lowering carbon and use sustainable products)

Earliest Organisms on Earth

SPONGES
 Earliest branches of the animal tree (Metazoa - Parazoa [no tissue] - Porifera [Sponge]).
 Very first animals.
 They can survive freezing negative 80 degrees Celcius for months.
 Can be left to sit on a shelf for years.
 Some lived for about 20,000 years.
 Multicellular organisms that don’t have any organs.
 Cells are tightly joined together
 Produces collagen in a space outside of their cells
 Filter-feeding and water-cleaning creatures.
 They have pores and canals which are the open spaces in their bodies where water passes through.
 Sponges use their tiny hair-like filaments to pump water through those spaces to that they can filter out
food, like plankton.
 They seem soft but, some sponges have skeleton.
 basic unit of skeleton is called Spicule. It can be long and sharp or short and chunky. It depends on the
sponge to use it whether for structure or defense.
 Molecular clock analyses suggest they evolved about 780 million years ago.
 They survived all this time because they are basically unkillable.
 Can reproduce sexually and asexually.
 If asexually and usually in harsh conditions, they produce tiny bundle of embryonic cells called
Gemmule.
 Gemmule can survive anything. They can endure temperatures of -80℃ and levels of radiation 5x higher
than what would kill a human.
 some dry out and still hatch to form healthy sponges. Can survive 20x Earth’ gravity.
 Sponges need to eat.They feed on mainly plankton, like photosynthetic cyanobacteria, but they would
unlikely survive the Snowball Earth.

Snowball Earths where the world froze over twice, once between 716 and 680 million years ago
(Sturtian Glaciation) and 650 to 635 million years ago (Marindan Glaciation). Geological evidence suggests
that glaciers covered the earth, with open water being rare. While multicellular life needs light to live, like the
photosynthetic cyanobacteria and phytoplankton, many Biologists proposed that Snowball Earth was more like
a Slushball Earth with many areas of open ocean. This might account for the biological evidence that life
survived in this cold period but it doesn’t explain a lot of the geological evidence.Some recent research
suggests that during this times, ice at the Equator was maybe a few meters or even centimeters thick which
would have allowed light to pass through. Example is the Antarctica Sponges where they grow very slowly and
also grow quickly and explode their populations when the environment is just right.

Sponges exists during Snowball Earth, fossil record of the time is really limited. The earliest solid
evidence of sponges comes from 640 million year old chemical traces found in rocks in Oman. These
chemicals are the residues of sterols - the compounds that are produced by all plants, animals, and fungi - has
been linked to the class of sponges known as Demospongiae (a group that makes up 90% of sponge species
today, either freshwater and saltwater species).

The ocean back then had no oxygen and sponges may have totally change our planet.The atmosphere
contained oxygen 2.4 Billion years ago but in Snowball Earth there was very little oxygen in oceans. These
little oxygen that was available is mostly being produced by photosynthetic cyanobacteria near the
surface.Sponges are unkillable.They can live in really, really low oxygen environments. Their gemmules can
survive without oxygen. Some researches think that sponges helped oxygenate the world’s oceans, by making
room for bigger-producing organisms. In 2014, a team of researchers proposed that the slow rise in ocean
oxygen levels that we find in geologic record is due to the sponges’ feeding habits.The fossil record shows
that, at the end of the first snowball earth episode (660 Million years ago) cyanobacteria lost their standing as a
dominant photosynthesizer in the seas and gradually replaced by Algae. Algae helped increase oxygen in the
oceans, they lived in deeper and they were bigger, and when they died they sank to the bottom.

Before the Algae, any oxygen being produced was being used up at the oceans sea surface, it is
because of scavenging bacteria which ate dead cyanobacteria all the oxygen. But when the new Algae sunk
and died, starving scavenging bacteria and allowing oxygen to build up in the water. While the temperature
warmed up the atmosphere and oceans, 635 Million years ago Ice started to melt, the oceans were clearer and
more oxygen-rich, thanks to sponges which allowed animal life to thrive. 580 Million years ago, oxygen levels
in the ocean had risen enough for the big,beautifyl animals of the Ediacaran Period to take over. Many
ancestor animals appeared during the snowball earth and diversified immediately afterwards the Ediacaran
Period, like the last common ancestor of all vertebrates.

HISTORY OF TAXONOMY
Taxonomy - Greek words taxis = arrangement and nomia = method
- defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics.
- helps us identify related organisms and describe evolutionary relationships.
- names are wrote in latin (classical or medieval), some names are classical greek, some are
named after scientist, people, places, languages.
- naming is based on morphology (shape), physiological factors, molecular characters, behavioral
characteristics, ecological characteristics and geographical characteristics

 Classifying according to it’s parts

Aristotle
 Classified two animals into two: blooded and bloodless

Pliny the Elder  Wrote Naturalis Historiae

Carl Linnaeus
George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
 Wrote Species Plantarum 1735
 Wrote Systema Naturae 1758
 Binomial Nomenclature (Genus + species = name of
organism)
 Created a 3-domain system classified as alive (plants or
animals) or not alive (kingdom of minerals)
 treated species ad immutable, meaning they not capable or
susceptible to change.
 Compared living and fossil mammals (elephant and
mammoth)
 He found out different kinds of plants and animals with
similar but completely isolated environments. Now called
Buffon’s Law (1st principle in biogeography)

SYSTEMATICS

• A branch of science that deals with the study of classification, nomenclature and taxonomy of living
organisms.
• Organization and classification of organisms based on evolutionary relationships
• “The study of the nature and origin of the natural populations of living organisms, both present and past.”
(Myers, 1952)
• “The production of cladograms that link taxa through their observed variation.” (Wheeler, 2005)
• “Conceptual and procedural relationships among and within areas of systematics.” (Stuessy, 2009)
• The term systematics is derived from the Latinized Greek word and ‘systema’ means ‘together’.
• The systematics partly overlap with taxonomy and originally used to describe the system of classification
prescribed by early biologists.
• Linnaeus applied the word “Systematics” in the system of classification in his famous book ‘Systema Naturae’
published in 1735.

BRANCHES OF SYSTEMATICS
• Numerical systematics
This type of systematics is based on bio-statistical method in identification and classification of animals. This
branch is called biometry.
• Biochemical systematics
This branch of systematics deals with classification of animals on the basis of biochemical analysis of
protoplasm.
• Experimental systematics
This branch of systematics deals with identification of various evolutionary units within a species and their role
in the process of evolution. Here mutation is considered as evolutionary unit.

SCOPE OF SYSTEMATICS

1. Deals w/ populations, species, & higher taxa

- supplies needed information about these levels
- cultivates:
- a way of thinking
- a way of approaching biological problems important for the balance & well-being of biology as a whole

2. Using comparative method, it determines:

a. what the unique properties of each species & higher taxon are
b. what properties certain taxa have in common, and
c. what the biological causes of the differences or shared characters are

3. Concerned w/ variation within taxa

• classification makes organic diversity accessible to the other biological disciplines
• that is why systematics holds a unique & indispensable position among biological sciences

AIMS OF SYSTEMATICS

1. To inventory the world’s kinds of organisms (flora & fauna)

2. To provide a method for identification & communication
3. To produce a coherent & universal system of classification, &
4. To demonstrate the evolutionary implications of biodiversity

7 COMPONENT FIELDS OF SYSTEMATICS

• Biodiversity - number & kinds of organisms

• Taxonomy - art & science of describing organisms
• Classification - methods of grouping organisms - could be artificial, natural, or evolutionary ----- based on
homology
• Nomenclature - science of naming organisms
• Biogeography - studies the distribution of organisms - aims to reveal where organisms live, at what
abundance, and why they are (or are not) found in a certain geographical area.
• Evolutionary Systematics - seeks to classify organisms using a combination of phylogenetic relationship
and overall similarity - considers taxa rather than single species, so that groups of species give rise to new
groups
• Phylogenetics - study of evolutionary relatedness among groups of organisms(e.g. species, populations),
which is discovered through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices
 APPLICATION OF SYSTEMATICS IN BIOLOGY

1. Systematics is the study of diversity of organisms including past and present and relationships among living
things.
Relationships are established by making cladograms, phylogenetic trees
and phylogenies. The phylogeny is the evolutionary history of an animal or
plant, for a taxonomic group.

PHYLOGENY
• Evolutionary history and relationships between groups of organisms.
• Branch point – single lineage
evolving into a new lineage
• Basal taxon – unbranched lineage
• Sister Taxa – two lineages stemming
from same branch point
• Polytomy – three or more lineages stemming from the same branch point.
• Phylogenies include two parts: the first part shows the group relationships and the second part indicates the
amount of evolution
• Phylogenetic trees of species and higher taxa are established by morphological, physiological and molecular
characteristics, and the distribution of animals and their ancestors are related to geography.
• In this way the systematics is used to understand the evolutionary history of organisms.

2. The field of systematics provides scientific names of the organisms, description of the species, ordering the
organisms into higher taxa, classification of the organisms and evolutionary histories.

3. Systematics is also important in implementing the conservation issues because it attempts to explain the
biodiversity which is related to different kinds of species and could be used in preservation and protect the
endangered animals and plants.

The loss of biodiversity is related to the extreme harmful of the existence of mankind. The unchecked human
population destroy different kinds of plants and animals for food and other factors.

4. The destruction or suppression of harmful pests or animals by the introduction and increase of their natural
enemies is called biological control.

The natural enemies of pests are often introduced for biological control
for the advantage of agriculture and forestry. The natural enemies include
insectivorous spiders, centipedes, some insects, frogs and birds which are much
more economical than the chemical control because they have no injurious side
effects.

5. There are a lot of insects which act as vectors of various human diseases. For example, some species of
Anopheles sp. are the vector of malaria diseases, Aedes aegypti spreads the virus of dengue fever and
Phlebotomus argentipes spreads the pathogens of kala-azar fever. So taxonomists play a vital role in
identification of the species of vectors, and control strategy programs of the vectors should be planned in such
a way that the target species is attacked.

TAXONOMY
• From the Ancient Greek word “taxis” meaning “arrangement” and “nomia” meaning “method”
• The science of defining and naming groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics.

HISTORY AND SCIENCE OF TAXONOMY

• 16th Century – the rise of botany and zoology as applied science
• Botany – study of medicinal herbs
• Zoology – study of the human anatomy and physiology
• 18th and 19th Century – extensive botanical and zoological taxonomy (identification)
•19th Century – introduction of the theory of evolution
• Systematics – studied in universities
• Taxonomy – (assigned in museums)
• Geographic isolation
• Biological species concept
• Ecological and behavioral research

TAXONOMY
• Organisms are grouped together into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given a taxonomic rank.
• Groups of a given rank can be clustered together to form a bigger group of higher rank, thus creating a
taxonomic hierarchy.
• The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.

LINNEAN TAXONOMY
• Carl von Linné – Swedish botanist.
- Regarded as the father of taxonomy
- He developed the system called Linnean Taxonomy – for categorization of organisms and binomial
nomenclature for naming organisms.
- His name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnaeus

ROLES OF TAXONOMY
1. The only science that provides vivid picture of organic diversity (eukaryotes/prokaryotes; sexual/asexual;
producer/consumer)
2. Provides much of the information for the reconstruction of phylogeny (shows genealogical relationships
among species)
3. Reveals evolutionary phenomena making them available for causal study
4. Supplies classifications which have heuristic (leads to discovery) & explanatory value in fields of evolution,
biochemistry, ecology, genetics
5. Supplies almost all info for entire branches of biology, and
6. Makes important conceptual contributions that would not otherwise be easily accessible to experimental
biologists

WHAT DO TAXONOMIST DO?

• Discover, discern, describe , name , classify, study, compare, and identify the world’s living and extinct
species and other taxa.
• Document the living world
• Use a universal and internationally accepted naming system, governed by a body of agreed rules, to ensure
that taxon names are unambiguous and precise.
• Make sure that knowledge and understanding of biodiversity is organized and can be accessed.

WHAT DO BIOSYSTEMATISTS DO?

• Biosystematists study the big picture. The diversity of living organisms on Earth is the result of billions of
years of evolution.
• Seek to ensure that the classification of organisms, into genera, families and higher categories, is founded on
evolutionary relationships.
• Allow predictions about the properties and traits of organisms, and this is an important requirement for many
other branches of biology.

TAXONOMY
• Refers to the classification of organisms
• A branch of Systematics
• Involved in the classification and naming of organisms
• Does not deal with the evolutionary history of organisms
• Can change with further studies

SYSTEMATICS
• Refers to the study and classification of organisms for the determination of the evolutionary relationship of
organisms
• Studies the relationship of organisms
• Involved in the classification, naming, cladistics and phylogenetics
• Deals with the evolutionary history of organisms
• Does not change with further studies.

TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS: USEFUL IN

SCIENCE

• FEEDING THE WORLD

• Taxonomy of pests and pathogens
• Discovering biological control agents
• Documenting wild relatives of crop plants and animals to discover genes that may improve yields or resist
disease.
• Exploring the taxonomy of soil and aquatic microbes.

•IMPROVING HUMAN HEALTH

• Many disease-causing organisms have not yet been named or
studied.
• Ecologists and farmers of the human microbiome, carefully manipulating our internal biodiversity to cure
disease and keep up healthy.

•DISCOVERING THE DRUGS OF THE FUTURE

• 50% of all pharmaceutical compounds registered for use in the USA are derived from, or were originally
discovered in, living organisms.

• ENABLING INSDUSTRIAL INNOVATIONS

• Organisms that produce medicines, fuels, plastics and other organic chemicals.

• ENABLING SUSTAINABILITY
• By characterizing biodiversity, taxonomists and biosystematists provide the framework and tools by which
others can study change and resilience of the Earth system in the face of past, present and future stresses.

• THREAT FROM HUMAN-INDUCED ENVIRONMENTAL

CHANGE
• Global warming
• Pollution
• Extractive industries

TAXONOMY AND SYSTEMATICS SUPPORT OTHER FIELDS OF SCIENCES

ECOLOGY
• By ensuring that species and other taxa (subjects of most ecological studies) are scientifically robust, well
characterized, and can be accurately identified.

GENETICS
• By providing the evolutionary and taxonomic framework that allows an understanding of genetic diversity
and evolution

GEOLOGY
• By characterizing and documenting the fossils that form the basis of much stratigraphy and, hence, are
key to mining and oil and gas exploration.

EARTH SCIENCE
• By enabling documentation of biochemical cycles that help stabilize and drive the Earth system.

OCEANOGRAPHY
• By discovering and documenting the organisms, many of them microscopic and poorly studied, that underpin
and drive ocean productivity.

CLIMATE SCIENCE
• By enabling past, current, and future climate change to be tracked,through an understanding of their
effects on species and ecological communities.

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE
• By characterizing pests, diseases, beneficial organisms and the wild relations of crop plants.

MEDICINE
• By enabling deeper, more accurate knowledge of the microbiome, i.e. human pathogens and probiotics.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
• By discriminating species and supporting an understanding of life histories and management of natural
resources and species stocks.

CONSERVATION SCIENCE
• By providing the authoritative species names that underpin conservation planning and legislation.