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L2 Animal Diversity

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Aims of the module• Survey animal life, from protozoa to mammals, with emphasis

on the evolutionary forces that have created this diversity

• Demonstrate fundamental unity of animal life, in terms of mechanisms that organise body plans

• Illustrate the adaptations of animals to different lifestyles in different habitats

• Examine the causes of mass extinctions and new waves of adaptive radiation, and analyse the interactions of human beings with other animals

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Overview of lectures 1-3

1. Coping with animal diversity

2. Classification and animal evolution

3. Origins of animals

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http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rdmp1c/teaching/L2/AnimalDiversity/

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Species Scape

Organisms drawn proportional to number of species in each group

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Naming species

• Common names (e.g., lion, löwe)

• Scientific names (e.g., Panthera leo)

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Linnaeus

• Universal scientific naming system

• Uses international language of science (in 1700’s this was Latin)

• Each species has a binomial name

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How to use names

• First name is the genus or generic name and starts with a capital letter, e.g. Homo

• Second name, the species epithet, starts with a lower case letter, e.g., sapiens

• The two together are either underlined (Homo sapiens) or in italics (Homo sapiens)

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Names can indicate relationship, and can be descriptive

• Homo sapiens (modern man)

• Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man)

• Homo erectus (upright man)

• Pan troglodytes (chimpanzee)

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Names can tell us about relationships

Cherie Booth

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Cherie Booth Cherie Blair

Name changes matter

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Jonathon Roughgarden = Joan Roughgarden

Name changes matter

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32,600 hits23,200 hits

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Names can change…Leptodactylus fuscus (Schneider)

1799 Rana fusca Schneider1802 Rana typhonia Sonnini & Latreille1803 Rana typhonia Daudin1824 Rana sibilatrix Wied1826 Leptodactylus typhonius Fitzinger1841 Cystignathus typhonius Dumeril & Bibron1843 Leptodactylus typhonius Fitzinger1858 Cystignathus fuscus Günther1882 Leptodactylus typhonius Boulenger1927 Leptodactylus sibilatrix Müller1935 Leptodactylus sibilatrix Parker1968 Leptodactylus fuscus Heyer

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Birds of the Belgian Congo

• AMNH expedition of 1909-1915 lists 11,131 birds

• 8,827 of these don’t appear in modern bird lists

• Either massive extinction (or faunal turnover) of African birds, or…

• the names have changed since last century

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Stegomyia aegypti(yellow fever mosquito)

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Google searches give different results depending on name

• Stegomyia aegypti 1000

• Aedes aegypti 36400

• Culex aegypti 11300

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uBio Google client

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Why multiple names for one species?

• Ignorance of earlier literature

• Dispute over species boundaries

• Describe morphs of the same species as different species (e.g., colour, sex, or life history morphs)

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Species A Species B

males females

Species A

Species A

new species

females

females

hard stage

hard stage

Peacrabs of New Zealand

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“Three” blind men and the elephant

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A real example (Anomalocaris)

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Immortality = having a species named after you

Furnarius leucopusFurnariphilus pagei Price and Clayton

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Taxonomy needs help

• Making literature and specimens readily accessible

• Making it easier to identify species

• Making it easier to discover whether a species is new to science

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Home pages for species

• How would you find out about a particular species?

• Create a home page for each species (you could contribute!)

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WikiSpecieshttp://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

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Barcodes

Only a few numbers needed to generate unique identifiers

e.g., 10 x 10 x10 x 10 x 10 x 10 = 1,000,000

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DNA as a biological barcode

• Sequence the same stretch of DNA in all animals• Use sequence as a unique identifier• Quickly know whether sequence is new or not

(compare with all known sequences)• Get some idea of what unknown species is (e.g.,

it’s like fly DNA)• Already used in microbiology and forensic

zoology (e.g., whale meat)

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DNA sequence

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DNA barcode for Calidris alpina (Dunlin)

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Names and diversity

• Zoologists have a well defined scheme for naming species

• Names for species can change

• Internet will play a big role in cataloguing life (you could help out)

• DNA barcoding may be the future for species discovery and identification

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