Today’s lecture: Taxonomy

Today’s lecture revolved around taxonomy and classification. So what makes two things that have very similar properties different? Adrian discusses gum trees and how there are 700 types of gum trees. Any average on looker could look at two different gum trees that stand side by side and consider them the same, yet they are not because one tree has a  darker shade of bark. What can be confusing is, not one gum tree is the same, naturally they will not all have the same colour. So how does one establish that they are different?

Thus begins the discussion of the ‘boundary rule’. Classifying species to be in the same group, but different. An easy classification would be that of ‘fish’. What makes them the same? Well, all fish swim and breath in water, but you have an estimated 28000 different classifications of fish. It’s when you start to go deeper into classifying something that it get’s more difficult to establish that these two very similar things are not the same.

The basic classification of living things that I learnt in school started off with that of Biology but this made me think of all other things you can classify.