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 UNIT 1
DIVERSITY IN THE LIVING WORLD

Chapter 1 Biology is the science of life forms and living processes. The living
The Living World world comprises an amazing diversity of living organisms. Early man
could easily perceive the difference between inanimate matter and
Chapter 2 living organisms. Early man deified some of the inanimate matter
Biological Classification (wind, sea, fire etc.) and some among the animals and plants. A
common feature of all such forms of inanimate and animate objects
Chapter 3 was the sense of awe or fear that they evoked. The description of
Plant Kingdom living organisms including human beings began much later in
human history. Societies which indulged in anthropocentric view of
Chapter 4 biology could register limited progress in biological knowledge.
Animal Kingdom Systematic and monumental description of life forms brought in, out
of necessity, detailed systems of identification, nomenclature and
classification. The biggest spin off of such studies was the
recognition of the sharing of similarities among living organisms both
horizontally and vertically. That all present day living organisms are
related to each other and also to all organisms that ever lived on this
earth, was a revelation which humbled man and led to cultural
movements for conservation of biodiversity. In the following chapters
of this unit, you will get a description, including classification, of
animals and plants from a taxonomist’s perspective.

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 Born on 5 July 1904, in Kempten, Germany, ERNST MAYR,
the Harvard University evolutionary biologist who has been
called ‘The Darwin of the 20th century’, was one of the 100
greatest scientists of all time. Mayr joined Harvard’s Faculty
of Arts and Sciences in 1953 and retired in 1975, assuming
the title Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus.
Throughout his nearly 80-year career, his research
spanned ornithology, taxonomy, zoogeography, evolution,
systematics, and the history and philosophy of biology. He
almost single-handedly made the origin of species diversity
the central question of evolutionary biology that it is today.
He also pioneered the currently accepted definition of a
biological species. Mayr was awarded the three prizes widely
regarded as the triple crown of biology: the Balzan Prize in
1983, the International Prize for Biology in 1994, and the
Crafoord Prize in 1999. Mayr died at the age of 100 in the
year 2004.
Ernst Mayr
(1904 – 2004)

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 CHAPTER 1
THE LIVING WORLD
1.1 Diversity in the How wonderful is the living world ! The wide range of living types is
Living World amazing. The extraordinary habitats in which we find living
1.2 Taxonomic organisms, be it cold mountains, deciduous forests, oceans, fresh water
Categories lakes, deserts or hot springs, leave us speechless. The beauty of a
galloping horse, of the migrating birds, the valley of flowers or the
attacking shark evokes awe and a deep sense of wonder. The
ecological conflict and cooperation among members of a population
and among populations of a community or even the molecular traffic
inside a cell make us deeply reflect on – what indeed is life? This
question has two implicit questions within it. The first is a technical
one and seeks answer to what living is as opposed to the non-living,
and the second is a philosophical one, and seeks answer to what the
purpose of life is. As scientists, we shall not attempt answering the
second question. We will try to reflect on – what is living?

1.1 DIVERSITY IN THE LIVING WORLD

If you look around you will see a large variety of living organisms, be
it potted plants, insects, birds, your pets or other animals and plants.
There are also several organisms that you cannot see with your naked
eye but they are all around you. If you were to increase the area that
you make observations in, the range and variety of organisms that
you see would increase. Obviously, if you were to visit a dense forest,
you would probably see a much greater number and kinds of living
organisms in it. Each different kind of plant, animal or organism that
you see, represents a species. The number of species that are known
and described range between 1.7-1.8 million. This refers to
biodiversity or the number and

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4 BIOLOGY

types of organisms present on earth. We should remember here that

as we explore new areas, and even old ones, new organisms are
continuously being identified.
As stated earlier, there are millions of plants and animals in the
world; we know the plants and animals in our own area by their local
names. These local names would vary from place to place, even within
a country. Probably you would recognise the confusion that would be
created if we did not find ways and means to talk to each other, to
refer to organisms we are talking about.
Hence, there is a need to standardise the naming of living
organisms such that a particular organism is known by the same
name all over the world. This process is called nomenclature.
Obviously, nomenclature or naming is only possible when the
organism is described correctly and we know to what organism the
name is attached to. This is identification. In order to facilitate the
study, number of scientists have established procedures to assign a
scientific name to each known organism. This is acceptable to
biologists all over the world. For plants, scientific names are based on
agreed principles and criteria, which are provided in International Code
for Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN). You may ask, how are animals
named? Animal taxonomists have evolved International Code of
Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). The scientific names ensure that
each organism has only one name. Description of any organism should
enable the people (in any part of the world) to arrive at the same
name. They also ensure
that such a name has not been used for any other known organism.
Biologists follow universally accepted principles to provide
scientific names to known organisms. Each name has two
components – the Generic name and the specific epithet. This
system of providing a name with two components is called Binomial
nomenclature. This naming system given by Carolus Linnaeus is
being practised by biologists all over the world. This naming system
using a two word format was found convenient. Let us take the
example of mango to understand the way of providing scientific names
better. The scientific name of mango is written as Mangifera indica. Let
us see how it is a binomial name. In this name Mangifera represents
the genus while indica, is a particular species, or a specific epithet.
Other universal rules of nomenclature are as follows:
1. Biological names are generally in Latin and written in italics.
They are Latinised or derived from Latin irrespective of their
origin.
2. The first word in a biological name represents the genus
while the second component denotes the specific epithet.
3. Both the words in a biological name, when handwritten, are
separately underlined, or printed in italics to indicate their
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THE LIVING WORLD 5

Latin origin.

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 6 BIOLOGY

4. The first word denoting the genus starts with a capital letter
while the specific epithet starts with a small letter. It can be
illustrated with the example of Mangifera indica.
Name of the author appears after the specific epithet, i.e., at the end
of the biological name and is written in an abbreviated form, e.g.,
Mangifera indica Linn. It indicates that this species was first described
by Linnaeus. Since it is nearly impossible to study all the living
organisms, it is necessary to devise some means to make this
possible. This process is classification. Classification is the process by
which anything is grouped into convenient categories based on some
easily observable characters. For example, we easily recognise groups
such as plants or animals or dogs, cats or insects. The moment we use
any of these terms, we associate certain characters with the organism
in that group. What image do you see when you think of a dog ?
Obviously, each one of us will see ‘dogs’ and not ‘cats’. Now, if we were
to think of ‘Alsatians’ we know what we are talking about. Similarly,
suppose we were to say ‘mammals’, you would, of course, think of
animals with external ears and body hair. Likewise, in plants, if we try
to talk of ‘Wheat’, the picture in each of our minds will be of wheat
plants, not of rice or any other plant. Hence, all these - ‘Dogs’, ‘Cats’,
‘Mammals’, ‘Wheat’, ‘Rice’, ‘Plants’, ‘Animals’, etc., are convenient
categories we use to study organisms. The scientific term for these
categories is taxa. Here you must recognise that taxa can indicate
categories at very different levels. ‘Plants’ – also form a taxa. ‘Wheat’
is also a taxa. Similarly, ‘animals’, ‘mammals’, ‘dogs’ are all taxa – but
you know that a dog is a mammal and mammals are animals.
Therefore,
‘animals’, ‘mammals’ and ‘dogs’ represent taxa at different levels.
Hence, based on characteristics, all living organisms can be
classified into different taxa. This process of classification is
taxonomy. External and internal structure, along with the structure
of cell, development process and ecological information of organisms
are essential and form the basis of modern taxonomic studies.
Hence, characterisation, identification, classification and nomenclature
are the processes that are basic to taxonomy.
Taxonomy is not something new. Human beings have always been
interested in knowing more and more about the various kinds of
organisms, particularly with reference to their own use. In early days,
human beings needed to find sources for their basic needs of food, clothing
and shelter. Hence, the earliest classifications were based on the ‘uses’
of various organisms.
Human beings were, since long, not only interested in knowing
more about different kinds of organisms and their diversities, but also
the relationships among them. This branch of study was referred to
as systematics. The word systematics is derived from the Latin word
‘systema’ which means systematic arrangement of organisms.
Linnaeus
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THE LIVING WORLD 7

used Systema Naturae as the title of his publication. The scope of

systematics was later enlarged to include identification, nomenclature
and classification. Systematics takes into account evolutionary
relationships between organisms.

1.2 TAXONOMIC CATEGORIES

Classification is not a single step process but involves hierarchy of
steps in which each step represents a rank or category. Since the
category is a part of overall taxonomic arrangement, it is called the
taxonomic category and all categories together constitute the
taxonomic hierarchy. Each category, referred to as a unit of
classification, in fact, represents a rank and is commonly termed as
taxon (pl.: taxa).
Taxonomic categories and hierarchy can be illustrated by an example.
Insects represent a group of organisms sharing common features like
three pairs of jointed legs. It means insects are recognisable concrete
objects which can be classified, and thus were given a rank or
category. Can you name other such groups of organisms? Remember,
groups represent category. Category further denotes rank. Each rank
or taxon, in fact, represents a unit of classification. These taxonomic
groups/ categories are distinct biological entities and not merely
morphological aggregates.
Taxonomical studies of all known organisms have led to the
development of common categories such as kingdom, phylum or
division (for plants), class, order, family, genus and species. All
organisms, including those in the plant and animal kingdoms have
species as the lowest category. Now the question you may ask is, how
to place an organism in various categories? The basic requirement is
the knowledge of characters of an individual or group of organisms.
This helps in identifying similarities and dissimilarities among the
individuals of the same kind of organisms as well as of other kinds of
organisms.

1.2.1 Species
Taxonomic studies consider a group of individual organisms with
fundamental similarities as a species. One should be able to
distinguish one species from the other closely related species based
on the distinct morphological differences. Let us consider Mangifera
indica, Solanum tuberosum (potato) and Panthera leo (lion). All the
three names, indica, tuberosum and leo, represent the specific
epithets, while the first words Mangifera, Solanum and Panthera are
genera and represents another higher level of taxon or category. Each
genus may have one or more than one specific epithets representing
different organisms, but having morphological similarities. For
example, Panthera has another specific epithet called tigris and

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Solanum includes species like nigrum and

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 THE LIVING WORLD 9

melongena. Human beings belong to the species sapiens which is

grouped in the genus Homo. The scientific name thus, for human being,
is written as Homo sapiens.

1.2.2 Genus
Genus comprises a group of related species which has more
characters in common in comparison to species of other genera. We
can say that genera are aggregates of closely related species. For
example, potato and brinjal are two different species but both belong
to the genus Solanum. Lion (Panthera leo), leopard (P. pardus) and
tiger (P. tigris) with several common features, are all species of the
genus Panthera. This genus differs from another genus Felis which
includes cats.

1.2.3 Family
The next category, Family, has a group of related genera with still
less number of similarities as compared to genus and species.
Families are characterised on the basis of both vegetative and
reproductive features of plant species. Among plants for example, three
different genera Solanum, Petunia and Datura are placed in the family
Solanaceae. Among animals for example, genus Panthera, comprising
lion, tiger, leopard is put along with genus, Felis (cats) in the family
Felidae. Similarly, if you observe the features of a cat and a dog, you
will find some similarities and some differences as well. They are
separated into two different families – Felidae and Canidae, respectively.

1.2.4 Order
You have seen earlier that categories like species, genus and families
are based on a number of similar characters. Generally, order and
other higher taxonomic categories are identified based on the
aggregates of characters. Order being a higher category, is the
assemblage of families which exhibit a few similar characters. The
similar characters are less in number as compared to different genera
included in a family. Plant families like Convolvulaceae, Solanaceae
are included in the order Polymoniales mainly based on the floral
characters. The animal order, Carnivora, includes families like
Felidae and Canidae.
1.2.5 Class
This category includes related orders. For example, order Primata
comprising monkey, gorilla and gibbon is placed in class Mammalia along
with order Carnivora that includes animals like tiger, cat and dog.
Class Mammalia has other orders also.
1.2.6 Phylum
Classes comprising animals like fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds
along with mammals constitute the next higher category called

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 1 BIOLOGY
0
Phylum. All

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THE LIVING WORLD 1
1

these, based on the common features like presence of

notochord and dorsal hollow neural system, are included in
phylum Chordata. In case of plants, classes with a few similar
characters are assigned to a higher category called Division.

1.2.7 Kingdom
All animals belonging to various phyla are assigned to the
highest category called Kingdom Animalia in the classification
system of animals. The Kingdom Plantae, on the other hand,
is distinct, and comprises all plants from various divisions.
Henceforth, we will refer to these two groups as animal and
plant kingdoms.
The taxonomic categories from species to kingdom have
been shown in ascending order starting with species in Figure
1.1. These are broad categories. However, taxonomists have
also developed sub-categories in this hierarchy to facilitate
more sound and scientific placement of various taxa.
Look at the hierarchy in Figure 1.1. Can you recall the
basis of arrangement? Say, for example, as we go higher from
species to kingdom, the number of common characteristics
goes on decreasing. Lower the taxa, more are the
Figure 1.1 T a x o n o m i c
categories characteristics that the members within the taxon share.
s h o w i n g Higher the category, greater is the difficulty of determining the
hierarchial relationship to other taxa at the same level. Hence, the
arrangement problem of classification becomes more complex.
in ascending
order Table 1.1 indicates the taxonomic categories to which some
common organisms like housefly, man, mango and wheat
belong.

TABLE 1.1 Organisms with their Taxonomic Categories

Common Biological Genus Family Order Class Phylum/
Name Name Division

Man Homo sapiens Homo Hominidae Primata Mammalia Chordata

Housefly Musca Musca Muscidae Diptera Insecta Arthropoda

domestica

Mango Mangifera Mangifera Anacardiaceae Sapindales Dicotyledonae Angiospermae

indica

Wheat Triticum Triticum Poaceae Poales Monocotyledonae Angiospermae

aestivum

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 1 BIOLOGY
2

SUMMARY
The living world is rich in variety. Millions of plants and animals have
been identified and described but a large number still remains
unknown. The very range of organisms in terms of size, colour, habitat,
physiological and morphological features make us seek the defining
characteristics of living organisms. In order to facilitate the study of kinds
and diversity of organisms, biologists have evolved certain rules and
principles for identification, nomenclature and classification of
organisms. The branch of knowledge dealing with these aspects is
referred to as taxonomy. The taxonomic studies of various species of
plants and animals are useful in agriculture, forestry, industry and in
general for knowing our bio-resources and their diversity. The basics of
taxonomy like identification, naming and classification of organisms
are universally evolved under international codes. Based on the
resemblances and distinct differences, each organism is identified
and assigned a correct scientific/biological name comprising two words
as per the binomial system of nomenclature. An organism
represents/occupies a place or position in the system of classification.
There are many categories/ ranks and are generally referred to as
taxonomic categories or taxa. All the categories constitute a taxonomic
hierarchy.

EXERCISES
1. Why are living organisms classified?
2. Why are the classification systems changing every now and then?
3. What different criteria would you choose to classify people that you
meet often?
4. What do we learn from identification of individuals and populations?
5. Given below is the scientific name of Mango. Identify the correctly
written name.
Mangifera Indica
Mangifera indica
6. Define a taxon. Give some examples of taxa at different hierarchical
levels.
7. Can you identify the correct sequence of taxonomical categories?
(a) Species Order Phylum Kingdom
(b) Genus Species Order Kingdom
(c) Species Genus Order Phylum
8. Try to collect all the currently accepted meanings for the word
‘species’. Discuss with your teacher the meaning of species in case
of higher plants and animals on one hand, and bacteria on the other
hand.
9. Define and understand the following terms:
(i) Phylum (ii) Class (iii) Family (iv) Order (v) Genus
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3
10. Illustrate the taxonomical hierarchy with suitable examples of a
plant and an animal.

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