The study of life, its diversity and richness in forms, shapes and behaviours.

When one looks around at any place on earth no matter how close or far removed from ones how, life can be seen right there and then. At the very least some traces of life can be discovered by careful observers (even without any formal training or previous interest in the matter).

The history of biodiversity research

Several important characters have played a role in the early development of structure in Biological research. Most of these will be quite familiar names to accustomed readers.

 

 

As is obvious from the above figure one should note that there are quite a few levels to this system. Unfortunately nature gets more complicated than this and some organisms are very difficult to fit in any particular system. Most of the time however only the Family level and lower (in this image) is directly relevant for most observers.

 

 

 

In this image you can view the moth Phalera assimilis which is Genus Phalera and species assimilis. Furthermore it belongs to the family Notodontidae. Since we already know that we are observing a moth (order: Lepidoptera) we do not currently need more information about its classification.

Higher order classification does become relevant when you observe multiple organisms on the same (or very proximate) location or when it grows, or feeds from one of the organisms in the picture.

 

All in all classification is a useful tool for scientists (and anyone else interested) in establishing and understanding relationships between organisms and how that influences their behaviours and histories. Together we can see that as the collective ecology of the system. This has both current ecological value as evolutionary value derived from both the past and current events.