Upload
anonymous-hxlczq3
View
217
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/28/2019 How Do We Classify the Living World
1/5
How do we classify the living world? Page 1
Notes on Biology
How do we classify the living world?
Life used to be simple! Early scientists classified organisms as either Animal or Plant.Animals moved, had nervous systems and showed heterotrophic nutrition, among
other features. Plants, in contrast, were photosynthetic with a cell wall enclosing the
cytoplasm. Bacteria and fungi aren't usually photosynthetic but as they have cell walls
they were looked upon as being plant-like. (We now know their cell walls are really
quite different.) In this simple system of plants and animals, "plants" which had no
recognisable shoot/root/leaf regions were said to have a body termed a thallus and
were termed Thallophytes. In this earliest classification system bacteria, fungi and
algae were all put into this grouping.
There is, however, a more fundamental divide than all that. We now know that based
on cell structure we can divide organisms into prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Theeukaryotic cells (e.g.of plants, animals and fungi) have a nucleus, internal membrane
systems (i.e. organelles like mitochondria) and distinctive 80S ribosomes. The bacteria
show the radically different prokaryotic organisation without internal membranes, with
naked DNA in place of a nucleus, with 70S ribosomes and with different flagellar
structure.
Today we recognise;-
Monera (Prokaryotes) - with their radically different cell structure, namely the
bacteria including the blue-green bacteria (once called blue-green algae).
Plants - photosynthetic (mainly terrestrial) eukaryotes with cell walls
Animals - motile, heterotrophic eukaryotes, the cells of which are not surrounded
by cell walls
Fungi - non-motile, cell wall-bound, spore-bearing eukaryotes with a saprophytic
or parasitic mode of heterotrophic nutrition
Click here for more on fungi
A fifth kingdom is also recognised by many scientists ;-
Protista - defined really as none of the above! It comprises eukaryotic
microorganisms and their immediate descendants, viz. protozoa, slime molds,
algae.
7/28/2019 How Do We Classify the Living World
2/5
How do we classify the living world? Page 2
Taken together these constitute the Five Kingdom Classification of Whittaker
(1969)
Cavalier-Smith (2004) has proposed a Six Kingdom System
Prokaryote EmpireBacterial Kingdom
with their radically different cell structure, including the blue-green bacteria (once
called blue-green algae).
Eukaryote Empire
Plant Kingdom - all land plants as well as green and red algae
Animal Kingdom - motile, heterotrophic eukaryotic organisms, the cells of which
are not surrounded by cell walls
Fungal Kingdom - non-motile, cell wall-bound, spore-bearing eukaryotes with asaprophytic or parasitic mode of heterotrophic nutrition
Click here for more on fungi
Protozoan Kingdom- eukaryotic, motile unicells
Chromist Kingdom - includes brown algae, golden algae, yellow-green algae,
diatoms, water molds
Many botanists have a problem with the idea that algae, especially green algae, are not
considered plants. This six kingdom system at least places green algae within the plantkingdom. A similar view unites all Green Plants in the Tree of Life Project. In fact,
the Tree of Life Project which is an international collaborative project recognises that
while Plants, Fungi and Animals are clear Eukaryotic evolutionary lines, unravelling
the interrelationships of the other Eukaryotes ('Protists') is very much a work in
progress. Part of this story is the endosymbiont hypothesis of how plastids have
evolved and been passed on within these groups.
An Eight Kingdom system has also been proposed. If only monophyletic groups an
ancestor and its descendents should be accepted as forming a kingdom then these
groups may be quite unlike traditional kingdoms. You could end up with animals andfungi in one kingdom! The question is How many Kingdoms?
In this course, we will not worry too much about classification systems and will focus
on green algae and survey other major algal groups in order to get a better
7/28/2019 How Do We Classify the Living World
3/5
How do we classify the living world? Page 3
understanding of how land plants evolved.
What is a plant?
All the features of plants can readily be understood in the context of their autotrophic
mode of nutrition. If plants simply transform light energy into chemical energy then all
that is required is for the plant to be anchored firmly in one place with a maximum
surface area to capture sunlight. There is no need for plants to move or to have
sophisticated nervous systems such as animals need to enable them to find food. (By
analogy, have you ever seen a solar water heater that moved? Its not an attribute that
householders feel to be necessary!)
Far from being boring and just sitting there and doing nothing plants by their subtlety
are quite intriguing.
Because they cannot move, plants must be extremely responsive to
environmental cues and have their life cycle in perfect synchrony with the
seasons. Plants must tide over inhospitable dry seasons or winters as seeds, bulbs
etc or in the case of some trees in a "bare-bones" leafless state. A plant cannot
simply pick up itself like an animal and get out of the rain!
Because they cannot move and because it is their lot in the web of life to be eaten
by animals, plants have a unique mode of development. This involves plants
growing by meristems at their tips. Plants also have remarkable powers of
regeneration resulting from the fact that plant cells are totipotent. Any single
plant cell can regenerate an entire plant with all its cell types - a feat no animal
can match. A limb lopped off an animal is certain disaster. For a plant it just
regenerates the missing portion!
Plants use the cheapest material around to generate size - water and carbohydrates
(Wiebe, 1978). They have a unique means of attaining stature with the most basic of
skeletal materials - no bones, no expensive proteins!
7/28/2019 How Do We Classify the Living World
4/5
How do we classify the living world? Page 4
Each plant cell comprises a protoplast with a central vacuole which makes the cell
much bigger than it would otherwise be. The protoplast is enclosed by a cell wall
based on polysaccharides. The tendency of the protoplast to take in water (by osmosis)
is counteracted by the cell wall which restricts this expansion. This mutual antagonism
between protoplast and cell wall makes each cell a turgid little box. It is this simple
construction principle that allows herbaceous plants with little or no strengthening
material to rise several feet into the air relying on this system of one turgid box on top
of the next!
The earth today is dominated by the flowering plants. Our purpose in this course is to
understand how these flowering plants came into being. We can only understand this
by studying the plant groups that came before. This course is, therefore, a brief survey
of the plant kingdom from an evolutionary perspective.
PLANT CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS
There are several plant classification systems and little agreement, e.g. some botanists
believe the ferns are a class within the Division Pteridophyta, others consider them adivision of their own. In this course, rather than use a formal classification system we
will simply refer to these groups by their informal names;-
Algae
Bryophytes
Pteridophytes
Gymnosperms
Angiosperms
There are a few other higher categories of classification you may come across in your
reading.
Lower plants usually include algae and Bryophytes, while higher plants refer to
Pteridophytes, Gymnosperms and Angiosperms.
The word Cryptogams literally means "hidden wedding" and alludes to the fact that
7/28/2019 How Do We Classify the Living World
5/5
How do we classify the living world? Page 5
the sex life of these plants (algae, Bryophytes and Pteridophytes) was once not
understood. Phanerogams ("open wedding") are the seed plants - the gymnosperms
and angiosperms.
Thallophytes is an outmoded term for plants whose body is not differentiated into
root/stem/leaves but is termed a thallus. Algae fall into this category (and fungi did too
when they were considered to be plants).
Vascular plants or Trachaeophytes are those with vascular tissue (xylem &
phloem). Embryophytes (all but algae) are plants that bear an embryo and are
synonymous with land plants.