Simple Ways to understand Systematics (Biology)

 

    

    

        Systematics is inevitable and indispensable for the biological field. Systematics is a key tool for scientists to classify an organism to be fitted into specific groups of similar kinds. It is a combination of taxonomy and phylogenetic analysis, whereas the previous one is the science of discovering, describing, and classifying groups, and the latter is an analysis of the relationship among organisms.

Sounds too Bookish Right?!

    Let's see how we can understand it in much simpler ways than it be. 

This is the scientific position of an Ant among animal world

       One should remember three major things.

               First, it is very similar to the address for our home.

               Second, how much it should be magnified.

               Third, what are and how many differences are there between two adjacent or comparables.

How to Start?

    Ok, now let’s take the example of Person A who lives in the address to understand the first point.

      26/1, G.D. Roy Branch Road, Shakuntala Park, Kolkata- 700 0XX.

    From the given example, if person B asks Person A, he will tell the full address, hierarchically mentioning the building number to the locality. But for the Classification, it is just reverse where the “Locality” name is at first representing larger area, then narrowed down to a specific smaller “building number”.

So, when we use this concept in the field in reverse, first we mention the "larger area" of Phylum, within which "smaller areas" of Class, Order, Family lies.

Which should be your Scale or Magnify?

        Coming to the second point, we are very convenient in zooming in and out by double-tapping, or by panning the picture on the digital screen, where the picture can be viewed at different levels of zooming. This concept can be applied to the classification also. If we apply the same to the given example of address, we can further add “WEST BENGAL”, a larger entity or identity than “KOLKATA” (by ZOOMING OUT),

                       OR, 

 “WARD NUMBER”, a smaller entity or identity than “KOLKATA” (ZOOMING IN). 

    Same for the classification, where Phylum is a larger entity than Class and Subclass, Infraclass, and others are smaller entities. So if we want to compare an ant and a tiger, we have to ZOOM OUT to look into the big picture, whereas to distinguish between a red ant and a black ant, we have to ZOOM IN to find minute details.

Now into finer details

    Likely it is going well up to this point, the twist lies if another person C comes into play where C is also living in the same area, locality, region, and country.  Here one has to ZOOM IN to find differences between Person A and Person C.     

        The differences can be i) the number of ways to reach the place, ii) the availability of vehicles, iii) the types of vehicles available to reach their corresponding address, and many others. This is a comparison of two persons using specific minute but essential details, and this is the main ‘gist’ of systematics, to compare among organisms, to delineate relationships, whether they are ‘immediate’ neighbors or they are ‘long distance’ friends.

One Last Thing, Why it is necessary?

• To know the diversity, i.e., the beauties of Mother nature. 
• To find biological, physiological, anatomical and other details in between organisms.
• To relate or distinguish between animals or animalcules.
• To find the pieces of puzzle: how life has originated and established in this beautiful earth.   

Hoping that it has put some light on the complicated concept. We will discuss another such topic shortly.